Question Flare 12 Glossary Settings - Ignore case

[barbs]

I'm trying to tweak our glossary settings a bit to improve their function and I'm running into a little trouble with the following settings for a term:

* Stem words to include term variants in automatic link creation
* Ignore case in automatic link creation

I have several words where I DO want to "stem words" but DO NOT want to "ignore case". Is there any way to do this?

For instance, I have a glossary term for "data entry control". I do want the glossary to pick up for the plural "data entry controls", but I don't want to put both phrases into the "terms" because then I end up with it picking up as a glossary term as often as in the same sentence. But if I enable "stemming" and get ride of the plural term, then "ignore case" is also automatically enabled, and this leads to another problem. "Data Entry Control" is also used in links and headings and I do NOT want the glossary hitting on them. If I disable "ignore case" it works great, but then my plural for "data entry control" is not picking up. The two options are tied together....you can't disable "ignore case" when you have enabled "stem words".

Does anyone know a work-around for this?

Thanks
Barb

[NorthEast]

Why couldn't you switch off the stem words setting, and enter all the plurals/alternatives for that term?

[barbs]

Hi Dave,

That's a valid question, but that is exactly the model we are trying to get away from by using the "stem" option. It can lead to cluttering up some of our documentation. Consider this scenario:

We have a single glossary description for the terms "data entry form" and "form" in our system. If we include the the plural for each as a glossary term, then these words all become glossary links in this single sentence:

"There are several ways that you can change how your data entry form behaves at print-time, including the order in which multiple forms are displayed, whether or not a form is displayed at all, and the tab order of the controls on the each form."

By using the "stem" option, we can at least eliminate one of those. Of note, "controls" is also a glossary term, so that sentence without the stem option enabled, actually has 4 glossary links. That seems a little excessive and we're trying to work our way out of these glossary heavy sentences.

We had previously been adding a glossException span tag to terms when we did not want to include them in a glossary link, but those span tags were getting used to excess, and now it turns out that they impact our translation efforts as well.

Barb

[NorthEast]

OK, I can see that would happen.

I always use the option Convert only marked terms, and never use the automatic Convert first/all... options, so I can control which terms become glossary links.

You have to be quite careful if you use those automatic glossary link options.
I wouldn't have words like "form" and "controls" in my glossary, and I definitely wouldn't set them as Stem words.
For example:
- For "form", you'll have glossary links for "formed", "forming", and "form(s)" when used as a verb.
- For "control", you'll have glossary links for "controlled", "controlling, "controller", and "control(s)" when used as a verb.

If you use convert only marked terms, then at least you can choose which terms are glossary links.

[barbs]

Actually I haven't seen the "over-stemming" as an issue for the scenarios you list. This is probably because Flare only turns the first instance on each page into the glossary link. Those terms are a major part of our vocabulary and are usually mentioned in the first paragraph of a page, or shortly thereafter. So, even if later in the page we're talking about something being formed or forming, or controlling something, it doesn't get turned into the glossary link. My biggest problem is if we mentioned the Control Properties page. This is a bolded UI element and we don't want the glossary to pick it up. If I could just turn off "ignore case", I could enjoy my weekend!

Thanks for your suggestions about the marking, though. I didn't create the glossary to begin with, so I'm learning as I go.
Barb