Looking for a technique for applying conditionals

[Joe Malin]

This is rather off-topic:

You're not working for Oracle by any chance, are you?

At Oracle I had to deal with all four OSes: Win32, Solaris, Linux, and
HP-UX. I didn't bother with conditionals, though. We had one manual to
cover everything, and put all four in the same manual. I also discovered
that the three variations of UN*X had enough differences between them
that conditionals within a paragraph or even section wouldn't have been
that useful.

Just a note. Also, this meant that the technical marketing team decided
to list each OS separately instead of just saying "UN*X". This may not
be what Linux or HP-UX people want to hear, but I think it's a useful
distinction.


	 Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin at tuvox.com 
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
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-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+jmalin=tuvox.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+jmalin=tuvox.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf
Of John Posada
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 2:06 PM
To: Combs, Richard; List, Framers
Subject: RE: Looking for a technique for applying conditionals

> My advice: Use three conditions, Win, Unix, and Both, and three 
> _complete_ paragraphs, one for each condition. Applying conditions to 
> a word here and there is just asking for trouble -- extra spaces or 
> spaces missing, etc.

The problem with this part is that we have some applications that run on
Solaris and Linux only, some that run on Solaris and HP-UX only, some
that run only on Solaris...you get the idea.

However, I do agree about the problms with conditionalizing at the word
level...just hoping that someone will come out with an "ah HAH!"
technique.