MadCap Software Forums

Is it reasonable to expect that when you set a condition tag for a folder, that tag will be applied to all files in the folder? Coz it doesn't.

I can't think of a reason to have a condition tag applied to a folder but not to the contained files.

are you talking about in the content explorer or the TOC? in the TOC, you can apply the condition to just the top level folder and the entries below it will not display.

Did you apply different conditions to the files inside the folder?
Coz if you have condition A applied to the folder and condition B applied to a file in that folder then a target including condition B and excluding condition A would contain the file with condition B - in spite of the folder having condition A.
This is because the include has a higher priority than exclude ... everything you included by whatever condition is included in the output no matter what the excludes say.

lacastle - I'm talking about the content explorer.

i-tietz - no, all the files in the folder have the same conditions. In fact, they initially had no conditions and I wanted to apply the same condition to all. It is easy enough to show the files, multi-select and apply conditions to all at the same time.

No big deal - there must be a good reason for it. I suppose I am brainwashed into expecting Microsoft File Manager-type behaviour.

There has been a very interesting discussion about conditions on topics in the last couple of weeks - perhaps you can find it with a search, or maybe someone who contributed will be able to post a link. I couldn't remember which forum it was in.

Andrew Heard wrote:No big deal - there must be a good reason for it. I suppose I am brainwashed into expecting Microsoft File Manager-type behaviour.

???
This makes me think again: What exactly are trying to do with that folder condition? Do you want to exclude the files when building help with a specific target? In that case it should work. At least it does in our projects - we use that mechanism a lot. A folder condition is inherited down the whole tree. No need to apply the condition to all the files. If your folder only has that one condition, and the files are not excluded, that's definitely a bug.

What I wanted is to apply a condition to all files in the folder, then change the condition of a few of them.

As I said, easy enough to do a bulk properties change by showing files in the Content Explorer, selecting multiple files and doing a bulk properties change.

In fact, since the folder condition overrides the file condition as you describe, this is more useful.

Thanks for the tip.

Laura - thanks for your clarification re. tagging topics vs. TOC entries. I thought that even if you tagged topic folders, all the contents were supposed to "inherit the tag." No such luck, I guess!

In any case, I tag topics, and I have gotten used to tagging each one individually. In the case of the main software app. I document, it's not unusual to have different topic tags within the same folder.

Regards,
Mel

gmel999 wrote:Laura - thanks for your clarification re. tagging topics vs. TOC entries. I thought that even if you tagged topic folders, all the contents were supposed to "inherit the tag." No such luck, I guess!

They do inherit the tag, in the sense that the entire folder (and all its contents) is excluded if you exclude the folder's tag from your target.

In any case, I tag topics, and I have gotten used to tagging each one individually. In the case of the main software app. I document, it's not unusual to have different topic tags within the same folder.

I'm a bit confused...if it's not unusual to have different topic tags within a folder, why would you want to tag at the folder level? Perhaps there's a better way to get the results you want, if you tell us your goal.