Conditional text insets

Sun Apr 27 10:43:44 PDT 2008

Thank you all for your comments and detailed explanations of how you deal with conditions and text insets.

The short answer to why we'd like to use "clean" insets is simplicity - minimize the number of conditions we need to create, minimize the potential for writers to unwittingly apply conflicting conditions, maximize the use of as many standard conditions (e.g., Help Only, Print Only) as we can.

I am aware of how to solve conditional problems, although I'm probably not as adept at it as many of you. Our situations are not quite as complex as some of the examples you have posed (at least not relative to the projects I have worked on). As a department, we try to avoid layering conditions and creating conditions unless absolutely necessary. Sometimes it can't be avoided. In any case, many of us meticulously record Show/Hide settings create conditional settings files to easily import conditional settings for our different outputs. I'm sure many of you do, too.

The potential for scripting a solution (as posed by Rick Q.) gives me hope. The department has serious initiatives that include simplify, automate, cut costs, increase productivity. 

Anyway, I'm holding on to your e-mails in case our "Product Owner" nixes a scripting solution and we end up handling this manually. At my age, I need all the reminders I can get. Conditionals make my head hurt - your e-mails could be part of my pain relief program

Thank you again for your interest and information. 

________________________________

From: Stephen O'Brien [mailto:sobrien at innovmetric.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 4:58 PM
To: Duncan, Gary; Stephen O'Brien; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Conditional text insets

Now I see.

That is FrameMaker's normal behavior...so the need for scripting...

If I understand you have 50 text insets...with 30 with one conditional tag and 20 with another....when you update the text insets the conditional format on their marker disappears...

Sounds like a job for a different book for each need...

Couldn't each text inset become a document in a book and then by controlling the numbering the first 10 text insets are numbered like section 1, the next ten become numbered as section 2, etc...

No conditional notions here...

Does that help?

At 03:19 PM 25/04/2008, Duncan, Gary wrote:

Hi Stephen,

Another person on the list was confused, too. I probably should have mentioned that we are single-sourcing for Print and Help and are not conditionalizing the text inset content directly. The inset is "clean," we call it in, conditionalize from within the container file. That works until the inset is updated (called back in). The inset and related condition info is replaced by the clean inset that is called back in. That is the basic dilemma.

Gary

________________________________

From: Stephen O'Brien [ mailto:sobrien at innovmetric.com <mailto:sobrien at innovmetric.com> ] 
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 3:12 PM
To: Duncan, Gary; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Conditional text insets

Not sure I understand the problem. But I am interested because I use text insets (several hundred) and conditional text formats (twenty).

Let's say that Doc1 has a text inset Doc2 which has three conditional formats A, B, and C.

If in Doc1 I want to see only the content of Doc2 that is flagged with condition C, I set show condition C in Doc1 and that's that. No problem.

The only time I had a problem with this is when I had the following case:

Doc1 has a text inset Doc2 with a text inset Doc 3 (with conditional formats called A, B, and C). I set show condition C in Doc1 and it didn't work! The problem I believe was that the condition was not defined the same way in Doc2 so the specification didn't make it to Doc3. I deleted the condition in Doc2 and then the correct condition definition (created in Doc3) was imported into Doc2 and then Doc1. I wonder if this is clear..helps.

I don't understand how/why a script would be useful here.

I probably don't quite understand the problem.

Good luck.

At 08:20 AM 24/04/2008, Duncan, Gary wrote:

Hi everyone,

We are trying to use text insets that get called into the chapter and
then are conditionalized from within the container file. For example, if
we want the content of an inset to appear only in Help, we give it a
HelpOnly condition from within the container file. We do not want to
conditionalize the text inset content itself because the condition may
not be appropriate in other places we use the inset.

This works fine until we revise the inset and it gets called back into
the container file. The condition is lost. At first, it seemed like a
bug. But after thinking about it, it makes sense that reimporting the
text inset replaces everything associated with the previous version. The
buggy thing is that Frame still indicates that the inset is conditional
(in the lower left corner of the screen where the paragraph/flow info
shows). The conditional dialog indicates that the inset is conditional,
but does not indicate which condition. In the end, however, the
information seems bogus because if you click on something else, then
click back on the inset, the info is carried over from the previous text
you clicked on.

If the conditional info was truly held in Frame, I was hoping that a
solution could be a script that scans for insets with associated
conditions and update and apply the condition. Now, I am not so hopeful.

Has anyone run into this and solved the problem?

Thank you...

Gary

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Stephen O'Brien
Technical Writer / Rédacteur technique
InnovMetric Software Inc. / InnovMetric Logiciels inc.
2014, Cyrille-Duquet, suite 310
Québec (Québec) Canada G1N 4N6

Tel.: (418) 688-2061
Fax: (418) 688-3001
E-mail: sobrien at innovmetric.com
www.innovmetric.com
PolyWorks, the Universal 3D Metrology Software Platform for Manufacturing (TM)

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Stephen O'Brien
Technical Writer / Rédacteur technique
InnovMetric Software Inc. / InnovMetric Logiciels inc.
2014, Cyrille-Duquet, suite 310
Québec (Québec) Canada G1N 4N6

Tel.: (418) 688-2061
Fax: (418) 688-3001
E-mail: sobrien at innovmetric.com
www.innovmetric.com
PolyWorks, the Universal 3D Metrology Software Platform for Manufacturing (TM)

Don't miss the upcoming International PolyWorks User Meeting on May 29-30, 2008, in Montreal, Canada! Register Today!

<http://www.innovmetric.com/Manufacturing/ipum2008.aspx> Ne manquez pas le prochain Congrès international des utilisateurs de PolyWorks les 29 et 30 mai 2008, à Montréal, Canada! Inscrivez-vous dès aujourd'hui! <http://www.innovmetric.com/Manufacturing/ipum2008.aspx?lang=fr>  