Conditional text for single-sourcing

[Peter Gold]

Hi, Nancy:

On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 8:53 AM, Nancy Allison <maker at verizon.net> wrote:
> This is a lengthy, nitty-gritty explanation of one oddity I'm encountering as I rework a manual in Framemaker for conversion to a .chm file. So, if you like nitty-gritty stuff, read on. If you find such discussions unbearably tedious . . . you might want to read something else!
>
> Because I started with an existing manual, I couldn't create clean standards that would make conversion easy.
>
> Example: the manual has introductory sentences like "Figure 3.12 shows a waveform generated by an Open test." It is followed by an anchored frame containing the figure, and then a caption with autonumbering that says "Figure 3.12. Open Test Waveform"
>
> In the online help system, this topic can be reached from any direction; as a result, chapter and figure numbers have no meaning. Therefore, I mask them using conditional text.
>
> Translation standards say that it is best to create an entire, alternative sentence, rather than creating conditional phrases. That's because the grammatical structures of other languages may not accommodate the alternatives that make sense in English.
>
> Therefore, I apply my PDF condition tag to "Figure 3.12 shows a waveform generated by an Open test." and to the entire caption.
>
> I create this sentence: "The following figure shows a waveform generated by an Open test." and apply my Online Help condition tag to it.
>
> The PDF has the original sentence, the figure, and the caption.
>
> The Online Help has the new introductory sentence, the figure, and no caption.
>
> OK, well and good.
>
> However, when I try to apply the same process to Table titles, I can rewrite the introductory sentence just fine and apply conditional tags to the two versions.
>
> But, the table title autonumber is built into the Table Title somehow. If I select the Table Title and apply the "PDF" condition tag to it, and display only the "Online Help" conditional text, I still get the autonumber in the Table Title. The actual title text is gone, but the autonumber remains. It seems to be hard-wired into the table itself.

The autonumber is a property of the Table Title paragraph format in
your document. You can have more than one paragraph in a table header,
and each paragraph can have a different format. So, you create and
apply a non-autonumbered paragraph format to the complete sentence you
use for your online/PDF table title, and manage its visibility with
show/hide conditions.

However, because a table title space is an isolated text flow (like a
table cell), the last paragraph in it is considered to be the "end of
flow," and is marked with the curly section symbol, not a paragraph
return symbol. When you select and apply a condition to the whole
end-of-flow paragraph, when you hide the condition, the curly symbol
isn't hidden, so it leaves a blank line at the end of the table title
or table cell. You can overcome this nuisance by including the Run-In
property to either the autonumbered or non-autonumbered paragraph
format, so that there's no extra blank line caused by hiding one or
the other paragraph.


HTH

Regards,

Peter
__________________
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices