PDF Content reuse with Frame + DITA?

[Scott Prentice]

Hi Gyanesh...

Each time you regenerate your book, the conditional settings in effect, 
will define the content shown in the generated lists (Index and TOC 
specifically).

The index is generated from index markers, and they will be used (or 
not) depending on their conditional tagging. This isn't too bad if the 
index markers are within a paragraph that is tagged with a condition, 
but if you just want to conditionalize words within a marker, that's a 
bit tougher .. in general you'd need to create duplicate markers with 
different text, and conditionalize each marker accordingly. However this 
is difficult to maintain since it's very hard to just tag a single 
marker with a specific condition. There are a couple of plugins that 
help with conditionalized or variable content in a marker (MarkerTools 
and Index Tools Pro .. links below). It's a good practice to avoid 
conditional content within index entries .. it's one thing to 
include/exclude a marker in a specific output, but if you start messing 
with words within a marker, you'll go nuts.

    MarkerTools - http://www.leximation.com/tools/info/markertools.php
    Index Tools Pro - http://www.siliconprairiesoftware.com/Products.html

The TOC is generated from the paragraph styles (headings) that you 
specify, and it will only pull in the content that is in a "show" state. 
As with markers, it's good to avoid conditionalizing specific words in 
headings .. it can be done but you have to be careful to conditionalize 
the spaces properly so you don't end up with too few or too many.

Variables will show/hide along with the surrounding content that is 
tagged in a certain way. If you want to change the definition of a 
variable for different output types, you can change the values in a 
template and import that into all files into the book .. or use our 
BookVars plugin to swap the definitions as needed.

    BookVars - http://www.leximation.com/tools/info/bookvars.php

If you're using DITA, depending on the method you're using to create the 
PDFs (through Frame or through the DITA-OT), you can still use 
conditional tagging, or you can use the filtering attributes on each 
element. With DITA, you'd typically set the filtering attributes on 
elements to determine the product, audience, etc. and when you generate 
your output, you'd filter out the elements that don't apply to that 
version (similar to using conditional tags). There's a great plugin 
(ABCM) for Frame that lets you apply conditions (and thus hide/show 
content) based on attribute values. This is a must if you're producing 
output through Frame and want to use attribute values to do the 
filtering (it's free too!). (If you're generating your output through 
the XSLT transformations in the DITA-OT, you'd do this filtering using a 
ditavals file.)

    ABCM - http://www.weststreetconsulting.com/WSC_ABCM.htm

Good luck!

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com
+1.415.485.1892




Gyanesh Talwar wrote:
> Thanks Scott!
>
> I think i will settle for show/hide. And if I do, is there a way to
> handle index/toc/variables (such as name of the book) automatically?
> Or do I do that manually?
>
> And let's say I have to implement DITA. Can I still publish two
> different PDFs selectively? And how will I carry out the selection of
> text in Structured Frame?
>
> Thanks again!
>
> Gyanesh
>
>
> On 5/18/07, Scott Prentice <sp at leximation.com> wrote:
>> Hi Gyanesh...
>>
>> If your main goal is to publish two different sets of content from the
>> same FM source files, I'd think that your best bet is to just use
>> conditional text (show/hide) in unstructured FM files. There are
>> probably benefits you could gain by moving to structure and/or DITA (and
>> it can certainly be done with structure/DITA), but for what you're
>> talking about, conditional text is really all you need. Just create two
>> conditional tags and apply those tags to the content that is only for
>> one product or the other (just don't overlap conditions) .. anything
>> that is common to both would be left untagged. Use the conditional text
>> show/hide settings to show one and hide the other, then generate your 
>> PDF.
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> ...scott
>>
>>
>>
>> Gyanesh Talwar wrote:
>> > Hello Framers,
>> >
>> > (Frame 7.2b144)
>> >
>> > For my product, I have 2 guides with similar content across different
>> > chapters. Can I publish two different PDFs from the same source (with
>> > selective content obviously).
>> >
>> > -> How will this be done? Using topic IDs?
>> > -> Is Show/hide a better option for this than Structured Frame?
>> > -> Is it viable to use DITA for this? Some other EDD ...or custome 
>> made?
>> >
>> > TIA,
>> > Gyanesh
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
>