Copy Condition Tags

[yossikarp]

Hi, All.

Is it possible to copy condition tags from one text string and apply it to another? In one of my documents I have a particularly complicated set of condition tags, so doing a copy/paste would save me a lot of time.

I am using Flare 10.2.

If such a feature doesn't exist, do you know of any work-arounds?

Thanks for your help,

Yossi Karp

[doc_guy]

I would take that portion that you want to reuse, and save it as a snippet.

Then you can insert your snippet into your topics, and use the "convert-to-text" option. That breaks the link to the snippet and allows you to edit it in your topic. Then you can just replace the individual words or make whatever changes you need in the new topics.

Does that make sense?

[yossikarp]

Doc-guy,

Thanks for the super-quick response. If I understand correctly, I don't think that the solution is going to work for me.

The text already exists and so I don't see how a snippet will help right now. Is there something I'm missing?

Yossi Karp

[SteveS]

Select the text, right click and select Create Snippet... That creates a copy of the selection (including formatting such as conditions) as a snippet and replaces the selection with a pointer to the snippet.

Now you can insert the snippet (actually a pointer to the snippet) wherever you want. If you want to break the pointer you can right click and select Convert to text from the context menu.

HTH

[Msquared]

If it's a one-off (you have this setup somewhere and just need it somewhere else) then I'd consider working in the text view, and cutting/pasting from there. Would that help?

If it's something you will need to do regularly, then a snippet is the way to go, even if the text inside the conditions is different each time. As others have said, make a snippet from one of your existing examples. Then edit the snippet to have placeholder text (say xxx, yyy etc instead of the actual text you want).

When you need this condition set, place the snippet (you will probably want to place it as text, not as a block - there is a difference). Then right click the snippet, select Convert to Text, and edit your placeholder text to what you need for that placement. Done!

Note that if you do this, this text is no longer in a snippet, so if you want to change the condition configuration later, you won't be able to do it in the snippet and have it appear everywhere you originally used the snippet, as it's not longer a snippet. You'll need a global search and replace or similar, but at least you'll know that all instances are written the same.

Another point I'll just mention - I always get warning bells ringing when I see "complicated" condition configurations. I don't know your documentation nor your requirements, so I may be speaking out of turn, and you have probably already considered what 'm about to say, but I always try to keep things as simple as possible. If things get too complicated, then I may forget how it works in months and years to come, others may find it hard to maintain accurately, and finally, if your content is being translated, complicated conditions may cause problems for translators, since different languages may need different subject/verb/noun/adjective agreements etc. Translators like conditionals to be done at no lower than the sentence level, and even if your content isn't being translated, I find that is a good rule of thumb as it is easier to see exactly what each will variant look like in the output.

[yossikarp]

Thanks to all for your replies and helpful advice. I think I understand now what needs to be done.

Fantastic support

Yossi Karp