Strategy for Handling Conditional Text

[Bernard Aschwanden (Publishing Smarter)]

Ideally I'd suggest try to avoid conditional text. That means planning. Then, if you do need to use it, you've done all you can to
avoid it, and it should appear as little as possible. It likely needs as little as possible to make it work as well. It's a great
feature, but one that you may be able to reduce your need for.

That means think a lot about what you write. With one client we took the approach of a Mac and a PC version of manuals, but we had,
say, 10 chapters that had the same info. We avoided product names. We asked the developers to match the product and dialogs. Then we
wrote generic. Instead of "on the PC, click FOO to open the Windows Explore" and "on the Mac, click YADDA to open the Finder" or
whatever, we wrote "Open your file browser", and similar things. The assumption was that the user would either know how to do it,
look it up in the chapter on Mac Specific Functions and Tips, or ask a person "how do I do *this*".

At the end we had 9 or 10 shared chapters, and 1 for just a mac, one for just a PC. Conditions almost didn't exist. We also dropped
versions and product names. Personally I find it a bit silly. At the end of the project we had a set of core common files, one file
for a mac, one for a PC, and two books (mac version and PC version).

If I have a book/help file/website and I'm reading about MS Office 2007 for Windows then do I need to see text that says "on your
Windows 7(r)(tm)(c), using Microsoft Office 2007(r)(tm)(c) you can open a file by selecting the File menu and choosing Open." Nope.
If I am reading the manual I already know that I'm using the software. And the version. And the OS. Now I have one sentence. It says
"Select File > Open."

That sentence, btw, likely works for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Paint, Photoshop, Acrobat, FrameMaker, WordPerfect, and so much
more. Heck, write it cleanly, assume some intelligence and problem solving in the reader, and you can have this:

-----

Open a document
Files that are available to you on your local drive, over a network, or through other locations can be opened. There may be slight
differences based on the specific software you are using.
1. Select File > Open
2. Navigate to the document to open.
3. Select the document
4. Click OK or Open.
-----

That now tells you how to do this regardless of almost all factors. It's not to say that your docs will be this easy, but a big part
of conditional use that I have seen with clients in the past 20 years or so has been due to the feature existing and people deciding
to use it, rather than planning their docs, and only using features when/where it makes sense to do so.

Hope that adds a bit to the discussion.

Best of luck,

Bernard




Bernard Aschwanden
Publishing Smarter
www.publishingsmarter.com

Write Less. Write Better.