Exclude content not linked; Bug? Feature Request?

[Dolemiteo23]

I was testing out the new "Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly from the target" feature, and encountered behavior that I didn't expect--it doesn't respect condition tags applied to links in topics.

It appears that this setting DOES respect condition tags applied to TOC entries. That is, if you:

1. Apply Condition Tag A to a TOC entry
2. Set the target to exclude Condition Tag A
3. Select the Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly from the target option

As expected, the TOC entry does not appear in the output, which is pretty nice!

However, I noticed that the option does not take into account condition tags applied to hyperlinks or xrefs within a topic file.

Let's say you create an xref in Topic A that points to Topic B. Next, you apply Condition Tag B to both the xref and to the Topic B TOC entry. If you set the target to exclude Condition Tag B, then Topic B shows up in the output. I was expecting it to be excluded.

It appears what's happening is that the Flare compiler reads the link as:

"This xref points to Topic B, so I'll include Topic B in the output. End of story."

as opposed to

"This xref points to Topic B, but the xref is within Condition Tag B. Since Condition Tag B is excluded from the output, I won't consider this xref that points to Topic B as a reason to include Topic B in the output."

Does that make sense? It's a bit tricky to explain using text in a forum post...I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but it would be nice if the setting would take conditions tags applied to hyperlinks/xrefs into consideration. A real world example of where this would cause issues is if you are applying condition tags to "See Also" entries. When you use the option, it will include any topics in the TOC, but it will also include all topics linked from "See Also" links, regardless of which condition tags you have applied to them.

[gbusch]

Instead of applying the condition only to the href/xref you could apply that condition also to the target file.