Conditional Paragraph Tags?

[John Newman]

Thanks for the suggestions. I suspect I'll end up using Richard's 
procedure, since that is essentially what I did the first go-round but 
with two sets of FM files instead of one. It will still require going 
through and fixing any overrides (which seem unavoidable regardless of 
how mature/complete one's formats are). Having already created the funky 
formats will make this less painful next time around.

I do like Shmuel's idea of making the appended text a variable. That 
would have definitely been the preferred method if this requirement had 
been around from the start of the documentation 3 years ago. However, 
I'll see if I can use search and replace work for adding text without 
taking too much time and effort. If that's successful, this sounds like 
it will be the solution of choice.

Thanks again!
John

On 6/7/2012 4:33 AM, Shmuel Wolfson wrote:
> I would not have added the text to the element as an Autonumber Format 
> if I could have avoided it. I would have added the text as a variable 
> and apply a condition to the variable after inserting it in the doc.
>
> If that's not a good solution for you, then I would add both sets of 
> styles to the same doc, only for the styles that you had to change. 
> This would require changing the names. So you would have "Figure 
> Caption" and "Figure Caption Special."  Then conditional each 
> paragraph to appear in one manual the standard manual or the custom 
> manual.
>
> Regards,
> Shmuel Wolfson
> Technical Writer
> 052-763-7133
>
>
> On 07-Jun-12 5:48 AM, Combs, Richard wrote:
>> John Newman wrote:
>>
>>> Since the appended version is a new requirement, I created one manually
>>> to meet an immediate deadline by making a copy of the whole FM book and
>>> adding the parenthetical element using Autonumber Formatting to the
>>> appropriate paragraph tags.
>>>
>>> I don't want to maintain two versions of the exact same content (it's
>>> over 150 pages), so how can I do what amounts to conditional paragraph
>>> tags? It'd be great to somehow tell FM, "Use NORMAL-LAYOUT because this
>>> is a normal document." And then after producing a PDF tell FM, "Use
>>> FUNKY-LAYOUT because this is a funky document."  The solution is
>>> probably staring me in the face, but my brain can't seem to find the
>>> way.
>> Make a special-purpose template file for each. In an FM file that has 
>> your existing book's paragraph formats, delete everything except the 
>> paragraph formats that need to be switched between the normal and 
>> funky definitions -- conditions, xrefs, table formats, char formats, 
>> etc. (This isn't strictly necessary, but it simplifies the file, 
>> avoids confusion, and prevents you from accidentally importing from 
>> it things you don't want to import.) Save it as NORMAL-LAYOUT.fm.
>>
>> Now make a copy of NORMAL-LAYOUT.fm and save it as FUNKY-LAYOUT.fm. 
>> In it, redefine the paragraph formats to have the autonumbers you 
>> need in the funky version.
>>
>> To output a funky version of the book:
>>
>> 1) Open FUNKY-LAYOUT.fm.
>> 2) Open the book and select all the files in it (or all the chapter 
>> files, if your frontmatter uses a different paragraph catalog).
>> 3) Select File>  Import>  Formats.
>> 4) In the Import Formats dialog, set Import from Document to 
>> FUNKY-LAYOUT.fm, select only Paragraph Formats, and click Import.
>> 5) Update/generate the book and create your funky PDF.
>>
>> To output a normal version of the book, repeat the above steps, but 
>> at steps 1 and 4, use NORMAL-LAYOUT.fm.
>>
>> Once you've created NORMAL-LAYOUT.fm and FUNKY-LAYOUT.fm, switching 
>> the book from one to the other takes less time than it took to 
>> describe the process.
>>
>> HTH!
>>
>> Richard G. Combs
>> Senior Technical Writer
>> Polycom, Inc.
>> richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
>> 303-223-5111
>> ------
>> rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
>> 303-903-6372
>> ------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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