FrameMaker.next

[Jeremy H. Griffith]

On Thu, 17 May 2007 20:08:17 -0700 (GMT-07:00), Diane Gaskill 
<dgcaller at earthlink.net> wrote:

>My question is Why??  I suppose this is a little OT, but I 
>cannot imagine needing more than 10 conditions, even when 
>you create PDF for both computer screens and handhelds, and 
>also help, as well as have 3 or 4 models of a product 
>described in the same set of files.  

I can imagine it quite easily... think "combinatorial
explosion".  With the present system, when you have 
more than one axis, like say "product" and "country",
each with two or more values, say pot/pan and UK/US,
you have a problem with unwanted intersections.  If
you say to include pot and US, and exclude pan and UK,
you'll be surprised to see that pan/US and pot/UK are
both present.  This is because when categories overlap
and one is in and one is out, the combination is in.

To prevent that, in the situation above, you need
tags for pot (not US/UK), pan (not US/UK), US (not
pot/pan), UK (not pot/pan), pot-US, pot-UK, pan-US,
and pan-UK.  That's the simplest case, and it needs
eight tags.  Add another axis, like user/admin, and
see what happens...  Hint: it's *more* than 16.  ;-)

>How in heck to you keep track of 80 tags, Carla?

That's the problem, all right.  Managing it all.  I've
been sorely tempted to write a free plugin to do that,
where you could have boolean logic that included more
than "OR".  Perhaps this is a feature in the next FM.
I don't know, myself, but I'd love to see it.

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/