Merging multiple PDF targets with conditions into single HTML5

[anica]

Hi everyone,

I'd appreciate some help with an issue I'm having now. We're finally migrating from PDF to HTML5 outputs. I have multiple projects which all share the same styles, page layouts, skins, what have you, but the content is rather different in all (or most) of them (think user guides for very different user roles in the same product). So far, each document, i.e., user guide for individual user role, has been a PDF target in its own project and that all worked well.

Now I'm merging them all into a single HTML5 project as they should all be in the same output and on the same page (literally). I've managed to successfully reorganize the files so it's very easy to keep them synced between the original individual projects and this merged project. That way, I can ensure that the content is updated in both, and I can still easily export both the HTML and the PDF outputs, since we'll probably need both.

But I have come across an issue with conditions.

Let me paint you a picture: Let's say I have one project file in which I have two user roles: Manager and Supervisor. These two roles share 97% of the content, but the Supervisor has a couple extra buttons in the UI every now and again, or has access to an extra tab that the Manager doesn't see. The rest is the same. I solved this by having a single project file and used conditions to separate the stuff that's just for Supervisors, such as a single bullet point in a list, or a different screenshot, etc. Then, through two targets, I just tell the Manager target to not include the Supervisor stuff; same for Supervisor if anything is marked Manager-only. This way I get two PDFs from the same project, with the minor changes managed through conditions. Easy enough so far.

However, now that they're all in the same project, in the same TOC, and in the same target, I can no longer exclude the Supervisor stuff in the target since I need both the Supervisor and the Manager in the same target, together with all the other users. I would need a way to exclude a condition just from one section of the TOC, not the whole target. Is there any way to do this? I tried to make a HTML5 target in the original project and then link the target into the TOC, but that did not work for some reason, the merged HTML project was built without that in the TOC.

Can anyone help me with some ideas? I really don't want to duplicate all the content to separate the similar user roles when it's almost entirely the same

[AlexFox]

If I understand your dilemma correctly, I suggest that you utilise snippets as these allow you to apply conditions to them at a topic level to include/exclude content independently of the target.

[dronan-evolv]

I'm having almost the exact same issue! It's quite annoying. I've been using flare for a while now, but almost exclusively for PDF output, and now that I am trying to build a knowledgebase, I'm running into the same issue of conditioning in some text and conditioning out other stuff for the same target. I have two generations of the same product, that I was originally single sourcing a lot of the topics. And then I have an Operator Manual and an Admin/Supervisor Manual, which also share a lot of overlap. I've decided to split out the Gen1 and Gen2 into different topics, but now sure how to go about having one target that has both the Operator content and the Admin/Supervisor content in separate sections.

[AlexFox]

I'm having almost the exact same issue! It's quite annoying. I've been using flare for a while now, but almost exclusively for PDF output, and now that I am trying to build a knowledgebase, I'm running into the same issue of conditioning in some text and conditioning out other stuff for the same target. I have two generations of the same product, that I was originally single sourcing a lot of the topics. And then I have an Operator Manual and an Admin/Supervisor Manual, which also share a lot of overlap. I've decided to split out the Gen1 and Gen2 into different topics, but now sure how to go about having one target that has both the Operator content and the Admin/Supervisor content in separate sections.

Snippets!

[anica]

I'm having almost the exact same issue! It's quite annoying. I've been using flare for a while now, but almost exclusively for PDF output, and now that I am trying to build a knowledgebase, I'm running into the same issue of conditioning in some text and conditioning out other stuff for the same target. I have two generations of the same product, that I was originally single sourcing a lot of the topics. And then I have an Operator Manual and an Admin/Supervisor Manual, which also share a lot of overlap. I've decided to split out the Gen1 and Gen2 into different topics, but now sure how to go about having one target that has both the Operator content and the Admin/Supervisor content in separate sections.

Snippets!

Thanks for the reply, the enthusiasm of this reply is giving me hope I've used snippets a lot but not like this - so you're saying I could put the same topic in the TOC multiple times, one time it would show the 95% same content + condition A, the other time it would show the 95% same content + condition B (or something else along those lines with that result)? Am I understanding that correctly?

If yes, can you please give us more info on how to do that or where to look, because that would be amazing?

Thanks!

[NorthEast]

so you're saying I could put the same topic in the TOC multiple times, one time it would show the 95% same content + condition A, the other time it would show the 95% same content + condition B (or something else along those lines with that result)? Am I understanding that correctly?

You can't use the same topic file. You need to create a separate topic file for each variant you need - so you have topic 1, topic 2.

Insert the snippet (or snippets) in each topic, and set the snippet conditions to exclude/include the conditions - so topic 1 might exclude condition B (and display A), topic 2 might exclude condition A (and display B).

[anica]

You can't use the same topic file. You need to create a separate topic file for each variant you need - so you have topic 1, topic 2.

Insert the snippet (or snippets) in each topic, and set the snippet conditions to exclude/include the conditions - so topic 1 might exclude condition B (and display A), topic 2 might exclude condition A (and display B).

I looked into it a little more and it'll take some major adjustments and many more topics and snippets to be made, but it'll be viable. Thanks so much for the help!