Conditional Tags for Figure Refs, Table Refs and Graphics

[techwriter31]

We use A LOT of conditional tags for all our various outputs. I also added "Print_Only" and "Web_Only" tags for tagging items that are only intended for print or web outputs. For print outputs, I have tagged front/back covers, the print table of contents topic, figure references, table references, etc. Then, when generating the web output, we could use the same TOC and exclude these elements. Initially, this seemed like a good idea, but as our outputs become more complex, they no longer cover as many scenarios.

For example:
Printed Manuals: We want to include figure references, table references, graphics, etc.
Printed QSGs: We want to exclude figure references, table references, and graphics (except for one "overview" graphic).
Webhelp/CHM: We want to include graphics and we want to exclude figure references and table references.
Future: I could see us eventually moving to mobile help, where we'd want to exclude figure references, table references, and graphics.

My thought was to create three separate conditions for figure references, table references and graphics, and then specify at the target level what needs to be included for the that particular output. I'd keep the "Print_Only" and "Web_Only" conditions for front and back covers, print table of contents topic, MiniTocs in weboutputs, etc. so we can continue to single-source TOCs.

While this seems the most flexible, I'm just afraid this may get too confusing with all the various tags. I thought about making all these tags the same color to reduce the "rainbow" appearance of these topics. And also since they all indicate particular documentation elements that should be included or excluded for a particular output...but again was sure if this would actually be more confusing.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

[LTinker68]

When you say you want to exclude figure or table references, are you referring to the captions for those items, or the "see Figure n" type of cross-references, or the actual figure and table? Because you can change how the cross-reference appears by using mediums in the stylesheet. For example, I don't want my figure or table captions to have numbers or even "Figure" and "Table" when they're viewed in online output, so in my default medium the auto-number-format is blank so only the text is visible in the caption. In the print medium, the caption text is preceded by "Figure n: " or "Table n: ". So which output uses which format depends on if the target points to the default medium or the print medium -- no condition tags involved.

Likewise, for my cross-references, I just want a hyperlink in online output but in print output I want a contextual reference, such as "see Configuring the Software on page 28". I do this by using the same xref class, but in the print medium the class includes the pageref variable ("...on page 28") but the class in the default medium doesn't include that, so the online output only has "see Configuring the Software".

So some of what you want to do you might be able to do via the stylesheet instead of using conditions.

[techwriter31]

Thanks for your response!

I use mediums for the web and print outputs, but in some cases I do want to exclude the entire figure caption, table caption or graphic. For example, in the install manuals (8x11 PDF) we include installation steps with a detailed graphic and figure caption. In the QSGs (4.75x4.75 PDF), we want to exclude the detailed graphic and figure caption and instead include a single, comprehensive graphic.

In a recent project, we generated two install manuals and two QSGs from the same content, but tagged the figure captions and graphics based on the specific outputs that we wanted to include them in, and then excluded them at the target level. But this won't work in cases where we want to include the graphic but exclude the figure caption.