Conditional Text - RE: Wrong conditional text displaying when using FM Track

[DeRosier, Edward]

Hello Heidi,

In addition to the cautious approach suggested by Fred Ridder, I would
like to suggest that you forego the supposed convenience of using
conditional text on characters, words, or even sentences.  You may think
that you are in control, but you also may get hit hard at a bad time if
your conditional configurations go wrong.  I speak from experience.

I am not sure what the current versions of FrameMaker are guaranteed to
support, but versions up to 7.0 recommended that conditional text be
applied only to complete paragraphs.  You can probably get away with
whole words, but be wary of potential problems.

The documents that I was working with had significantly long text
strings with multiple conditions embedded in them.  We used one basic
document to produce 7 different publications, simply by changing
conditional text settings.  As long as everyone who worked on the
document strictly (might I say "fanatically") followed the same rules,
we seemed to be getting what we wanted.

The one time that a snag occurred, we spent 3 days cleaning up the
source document and were therefore 3 days late with our deadline.

Your strategy,

> The simplified response I would give to anyone working with
> conditionalised text: always work with your conditions set to SHOW, so
> you can see where conditionalised text is, and can select just the bit
> you want without selecting markers for hidden stuff by accident.
 
> I always have done this, and hide the conditions I want hidden before
> doing a pagination check followed by pdf creation.

may not be enough to prevent small, or possibly disastrous, problems.

Regards,

Ed DeRosier
Senior Technical Writer
Anritsu Company