Conditional text in FrameMaker can make your life a lot easier if you do it right. It can make it a nightmare if you do it wrong, though!
First and foremost, always conditionalize in the POSITIVE!!!! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER create a conditional format meant to exclude, such as "not in prod.A". This will cause you more problems than you can imagine in the long run. Create as many conditions as you need. We have 80+ conditional text formats, but we organized them logically to make it easy to keep track of them.
As we defined each conditional text format in FrameMaker:
* Each product gets its own color assigned.
* User Guides, Programming Guides, and Quick Ref Guides are underlined.
* Maintenance Manuals get an overline.
* Kits get a strikethrough.
In the conditional text names, we put the type of book it'll go in (UG, QRG, etc.) first in the name, followed by the product name. This seemed a better option and made the conditions easy to find in the conditional text window. When you set it up in a table format to look at all of the conditions, it makes it very easy to follow. If anyone wants an example of the table, I can send you the frame file.
For our S4M printer, we have these conditional text formats:
* UG S4M
* QRG S4M
* MM S4M
* KIT S4M
This same naming convention is repeated for more than 20 different products, and has worked well for us for two years now.
Conditional text and translations:
If your documents are never translated, you can conditionalize at the word level. However, if you EVER plan to translate docs, use the sentence as your smallest unit. Conditionalizing individual words could cause unexpected problems in the translation process.
Our process includes creating an "Import From" file that holds the master variable and conditional text show/hide settings for each book. You should always show all conditions when working on a file to make sure you don't inadvertently mess up conditional text. All you need to do to reset the conditions is to import them from the Import >From file.
-Carla
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