Conditional not working for me

[mitches]

I have a hyperlink at the bottom of each topic. I want it to not show in the printed version.
I also have two diagrams in one topic that are specific for online and for printed.
I'm using the default condition tags.

I'm using conditional to show section numbering in the printed and not in online. That is working.

I'm getting a page numbers at the bottom of each html screen. They are all double page -1- -1-. Don't want page numbers on screens.

help!
skm

[Richard Ferrell]

is this the same for every topic? If so then use two masterpages one for Print, and one for online. If you are still having issues then I would open a support ticket

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/support/ ... px?p=flare

[doc_guy]

If conditions aren't working, the first thing I'd check is in the target editor to ensure conditionalized content is excluded. You have to tag the content with conditions, and then you have to exclude certain conditions from a target.

You might think this happens automatically for the print/online targets, but that's not true. You still have to set it in the target editor.

[Richard Ferrell]

If you have a print only set, and then on your webhelp target you would be sure to Exclude your Print Only condition, and If you had a screen only, then that would be excluded on your print output.

[jbean]

If conditions aren't working, the first thing I'd check is in the target editor to ensure conditionalized content is excluded. You have to tag the content with conditions, and then you have to exclude certain conditions from a target.

You might think this happens automatically for the print/online targets, but that's not true. You still have to set it in the target editor.

I have 4 different versions of my "welcome page" (for 2 different versions of the product, Windows and MAC).

I have each topic tagged appropriately (Product 1/Win, Product 1 MAC, Product 2 WIN, Product 2 MAC).

For each target I have the include/exclude boxes checked appropriately.

However, when I generate each output, 3 versions of the welcome page are included.

Which leads me to believe that the "exclude" part is not working (only the version of the welcome that does not have both of the "include" tags is not appearing.)

Anything else I should check ?

Is there a known bug with the exclude condition feature ?

Thanks

[LTinker68]

For each target, did you specify the appropriate "welcome" page as the start page, or are all the targets pointing to the same file? It's possible that specifying a file as the welcome page in the target overrides an exclusion tag on that file. Although that should still only give you one copy of the welcome page...

[Fedja]

Setting an excluded welcome page should report a missing topic error.

As there are so many ways of excluding text, and I wouldn't want to sound condescending asking you if you only tagged them in the TOC and so on... If you could provide screenshots of your exclusion tags on the text (blur out any of the actual text if you'd be uncomfortable publishing work-related data) and of one of the target condition pages, I'm sure we can eliminate most of the potential problems.

I work with projects that have up to 12 simultaneous condition categories all over them, and thus far, they've worked flawlessly for me. I'm pretty sure you're overlooking something in the exclusion settings.

[i-tietz]

- Are the welcome topics on the root of the content folder? Or deeper down in the structure, maybe even in a folder that has one or more conditions assigned to it? Then excluding of one or more of those conditions for a topic won't work! That is sth I reported as a bug already.
E.g.: Folder X with conditions A and B, topic Y in that folder with condition A only , will also appear in target with condition B, because that's what the father node =folder says
On the other hand - including sth. that way works fine: Folder F with condition A only and topic Y in that folder with condition B includes the topic and not the rest of the folder in a target with condition B only.

- Do you use snippets for the links at the bottom of the page or the diagrams? Then you would have to apply the appropriate snippet conditions in those topics.

But:
I don't think I would have used conditions for the online-only problem, but would prefer style sheets for online and print:
assign certain classes to the link or the diagram and in the print style sheet mark those classes as "invisible" ...

[megwilk]

That is the exact problem I am having.
I have a folder that contains topics and text that have 3 different condition tags applied. Some topics have one tag applied, some have 2, and some have all three. In one of those topics I have the text marked with all 3 condition tags so that when I build it it will only include or exclude certain text in the topic. When I go to build this it will not exclude what I am telling it to exclude. It includes all topics and all text, even though I have told it to exclude certain tags in the target editor. I have also tried leaving the condition tags off of the folder and topic, so it is only on the text, but that also does not work

Am I correct in understanding, as you said, that this is a bug? If so, is there any way to work around it?

[LTinker68]

In one of those topics I have the text marked with all 3 condition tags so that when I build it it will only include or exclude certain text in the topic. When I go to build this it will not exclude what I am telling it to exclude.

I haven't read this thread entirely, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned... You might want to open the topic using the Internal Text Editor and make sure that you're not overlapping tags. You can't have the opening tag for ConditionA then the opening tag for ConditionB then the closing tag for ConditionA then the closing tag for ConditionB. In other words, you can't do (in simplified form) <ConditionA>text<ConditionB>more text</ConditionA>still more text</ConditionB>.

You would have to write and conditionalize the text as <ConditionA>text</ConditionA><ConditionB><ConditionA>more text</ConditionA>still more text</ConditionB>.

[doc_guy]

You can usually tell in the XML editor if you have set the conditions properly if you can see the colors for both conditions in the checkerboard pattern. If you only see one color, but you have multiple conditions applied to the text, then the conditions weren't properly applied, as Lisa pointed out in the previous post.

[LTinker68]

You can usually tell in the XML editor if you have set the conditions properly...

...so long as you applied them in the right order. There's a known display issue where the conditional color disappears from the content display if you add a hyperlink or other effect after you've added a conditional tag to the same text.

[megwilk]

I discovered that my problem had to do with the drop downs. I had the condition tags set, but not before the drop down header in the code, so the drop downs were not being included in the conditions.

Thanks!!

[i-tietz]

You can't have the opening tag for ConditionA then the opening tag for ConditionB then the closing tag for ConditionA then the closing tag for ConditionB. In other words, you can't do (in simplified form) <ConditionA>text<ConditionB>more text</ConditionA>still more text</ConditionB>.

???
Why not? It works in FrameMaker and that was the reference model for this, wasn't it?

[KevinDAmery]

You can't have the opening tag for ConditionA then the opening tag for ConditionB then the closing tag for ConditionA then the closing tag for ConditionB. In other words, you can't do (in simplified form) <ConditionA>text<ConditionB>more text</ConditionA>still more text</ConditionB>.

???
Why not? It works in FrameMaker and that was the reference model for this, wasn't it?

It violates the XML specification. XML requires that all tags be fully nested.

[LTinker68]

Why not? It works in FrameMaker and that was the reference model for this, wasn't it?

Actually, the people who started MadCap were the ones who worked on RoboHelp in its infancy, so RH was more of a springboard than FM.

Overlapping tags don't matter much to FM, since it mainly (only?) generates print output. And whereas you might have been able to get away with overlapping tags in HTML, you definitely can't do it in XML.

[KevinDAmery]

Also on the FM front, you may be able to do that in unstructured Frame, but I would be surprised if you can do it in structured mode.

[mitches]

I discovered that my problem had to do with the drop downs. I had the condition tags set, but not before the drop down header in the code, so the drop downs were not being included in the conditions.

Thanks!!

I have included the dropdown into my snippet.

[David Milkes]

I have a similar problem, but I am only generating one target in which I have parallel topics with different conditional snippets. I have just found that if you DON'T flag the conditions you want to include as Include and just flag the ones you don't as Exclude, in the topic properties, it works. In my case, the snippets are only assigned two conditions out of 4, so it is easier to do the manual labor.

I think that it isn't clear whether applying two conditions to the same object creates a union (OR) or intersection (AND) of conditions.

[LTinker68]

I think that it isn't clear whether applying two conditions to the same object creates a union (OR) or intersection (AND) of conditions.

You see that in the target. If you select two conditions to be included, then you'll see it display at the bottom of the screen "Condition A" OR "Condition B". I don't think you'll ever see an "AND", although it's implied if you don't expressly state something as being included. In other words, if you have four conditions (A, B, C, D) and the only conditions you select are to exclude B and D, then it's the same as saying "include Condition A and Condition C but exclude Condition B or Condition D", even though you didn't expressly set A and C to include.

It behaves the same way everywhere you apply conditions, but it's only actually displayed with the "OR" in the target.