Help! Conditionaly tag images based on topics with images

[JoachimWeyl]

Hello. I would like to generate output (build) that only includes images that exist in articles that are tagged for the target.
For example I have Master Output and Child Output 1. Both have their own TOC, target and conditional tag.
I have tagged all Child Output 1 articles (topics) and need to now tag all images associated with those articles. There has to be a better way than doing it manually.

[MattyQ]

Hi, Joachim,

A quicker solution might be to organize those images into folders. You can then apply the conditional tag at the folder level. For example, you could create a ChildOutput1 folder and place all the images that are specifically for that output into that folder, to which you apply the ChildOutput1 condition tag.

One of the potential hitches will be shared images. For example, if down the line you create Child Output 2 and it shares images with Child Output 1, you would probably want to create a shared folder (or just leave those images in the default Images folder in Flare) that both outputs can pull from.

In any case, it limits you to only having to conditional tag a few folders, and then you can exclude the appropriate conditional tags in your target.

[JoachimWeyl]

Thank you for your response.
I have hundreds of articles (topics) and would hate to have to go through manually and find which images are associated with what articles to populate that folder. Is there really no way to generate a list of images in articles tagged with a specific tag? Or even better automatically tag them when an article they are in is tagged.

[JoachimWeyl]

I think what I might have to do is only build images with the master and then have all children symlink to the masters image folder.

[NorthEast]

There's an setting in the target (Advanced tab) - Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly from the target.
That setting should only include files in the output that are actually linked. I know that setting has a few bugs/issues though, but it might work ok for you.

I'd try that first.


I don't think there's an easy way to add condition tags to images.

If you have a little scripting experience, then if you can get a file listing of the images (e.g. from the built target above), then you could write a batch script to generate all the props files with the condition information. If you create a sample props file with the XML markup for the condition, the script could copy that file and rename it based on the image filename (from the list) and add a ".props" to the end.

[JoachimWeyl]

Dave Lee, you are a life saver (or at least big time saver) that is exactly the type of setting I was looking for!