Diverse templates and Structure

[Wim Hooghwinkel]

Hi Doris,

To be short: moving to XML does give you the opportunity to use different
templates with different conditions and paragraph tags set - as long as you
all use the same structure.

Is it that he wants to be able to hide some parts of the structure while
writing and display it in a different formatting while writing? That should
not be a problem (although a challenge for the template developers). 

In structured FM, each paragraph tag is connected to a structural element
(actually the other way round: each element will get a paragraph format
based on its position in the structure and optional attribute settings). So
is each condition. Based on the same element set (DTD or schema) you may
make different templates or even constraints in FM (omit elements from the
EDD so they're not available in the template). Using a constraint EDD
however will display errors when opening a document that is valid according
to the DTD but has elements that you've omitted in the template.

Basic line is: you've got to use all the same basic structure (DTD or
Schema) but there's no reason to all use the same formatting or style. I
guess your question is more of a manageability issue.

You have a problem if the writer means that he wants to use a different
element set.

Vriendelijke groet,

Wim Hooghwinkel


At my company, we are preparing to go from unstructured FM10 to 
structured FM10. Because of all of the messages on this board and 
generally accepted "best practices", we are doing some clean-up and 
preparation now before trying to implement a structure. However, we have 
at least one writer (we all report to different managers) who wants 
certain conditions and paragraph tags that will then *not* be in all of 
the documents. In the past, we have not done this. We all have the same 
character and paragraph tags, and conditions, loaded.

My question is - will there be problems moving to structure and XML 
output if we start having this kind of style drift?

Thanks - D