Techniques for debugging EDDs?

[Bernard Aschwanden]

Hi Steve,

Do your format rules have a final "Else" statement? If so, change it to a tag that is horrible, for example, red, bold, 48pts, italic, underline with a new font face.

This then will let you see what happens to "exceptions". If you didn't plan for it, then you see the ugly layout (with apologies to people who feel red, bold, 48pts, italic, underline and a new font face looks really sharp).

Basically, your rule could read:

If [whatever] then Body
ElseIf [whatever] then Heading
ElseIf [whatever] then Numbered
ElseIf [whatever] then Bulleted
Else then really ugly


Be careful with the order as well. With context rules a "hit" results in the rules "stopping". You can use multiple context rules though. With count ancenstors you have the "answer" right away, but only that specific condition is met and applied. Again, you can use multiple rules.

Basically you can build rules using any mix of context and count that you need to, just keep putting in new ones and not nesting them if you want more than one format rule to apply.

Let's see...

Paragraph tags overwrite one off formatting. So, ensure you apply the full paragraph format first in your rules, then create a second rule to add overrides. For example, if you use Bulleted everywhere in a list and want bullets within bullets to have extra indents, then apply your tag first, your overrides second. Otherwise the "winning" paragraph format is applied after you put in rules. That is, first state that all items in a bullet list have the paragraph Bulleted applied. Then create a second context rule that says "if a bulletlist in a bulletlist" add indents and tweak tab stops.

I'm sure that there are other things I do in the EDD build, but it's still my "vacation" week, so I'm only running on 10% of my brain cells. Others will likely jump in with some other suggestions, many of which may be better than this.

All the best,

Bernard



Bernard Aschwanden
Publishing Technologies Expert
Publishing Smarter

bernard at publishingsmarter.com 

www.publishingsmarter.com 





-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+bernard=publishingsmarter.com at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+bernard=publishingsmarter.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Steve Rickaby
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 7:13 AM
To: framers at FrameUsers.com
Subject: Techniques for debugging EDDs?

Dear Frame Gurus

I have a fairly complex EDD out with end-users, and most of the bugs have been ironed out and things are working well. However, one element is still giving problems, an ordered list with nested child elements.

Without going into what might or might not be the problem, although it is entirely possible to create the required element structures using the EDD, the end users complain that 'strange things happen' with the problem element, and have proved it by sending me a crazy document fragment that is conceptually completely invalid, but which validates against the EDD.

All my formatting is done using paragraph formatting rules. I have messed with Show Element Context, but have not found it very useful and have not yet discovered what the main problem is. I just wondered whether any of you could point me in the direction of links, or techniques, for tackling this sort of situation? (I am still on Mac at the moment, so PC-specific plug-ins aren't available to me.)
-- 
Steve
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