Conditional text and templates

[rebecca officer]

Hi Laura
 
By "template", I assume you mean paragraph styles etc?
 
I think I'd deal with it by having two templates - default and custom -
and importing settings from each in turn. I'd write the text with one
template applied and then import the other to check it.
 
You may already realise this, but if you've got 30% of the text
different, you need to be careful about your conditional text scheme. It
becomes a balancing act between readability (of your source fm file) and
reuse. My very rough rule of thumb is to have no more than 1/3 of a
"block" conditioned. Eg if more than 1/3 of the paragraphs in a section
are conditioned, I'll make and condition multiple copies of the section
instead. If more than 1/3 of the sections in a chapter are conditioned,
I'll make multiple chapters instead. 
 
Cheers
Rebecca

>>> On 28/11/11 at 23:48, Laura Fergusson <l.fergusson at codestuff.net>
wrote:


Hi fellow Framers
 
I’ve been making heavy use of conditional text in Framemaker 8
(unstructured). Up to now, all manuals for different customers have used
the one template.
 
I have a feeling that a new customer is about to request a customised
template. However, the content will still be very similar to the other
guides I produce for the other clients.
 
Is it possible to do this? That is, use one template for this
particular client, and keep the default template for the others, within
the same files?
 
If not, can anyone suggest the least messy way to proceed? I would say
70% of the text is common to all product variants.
 
Thanks in advance
Laura
 
 
Laura Fergusson
Technical Author
 
Codestuff
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