FrameMaker Conditional Text Question

["Lippincott, Richard" <RLippincott -at- as-e -dot- com>]

This comes from my boss, and when he asked my answer was "I don't think this feature exists" but I thought I'd toss the question out anyway.

We're running Frame 7.1, and are heavily into the use of conditional text. We've got a very large system that is made of two large but somewhat independent units, so we offer three different products based on this:

1 The whole thing (Parts A and Parts B linked together)
2 Part A only
3 Part B only

All of the information on all three versions is held in a set of source files, with conditions set. I've also got three complete sets of Frame files (books and individual chapter files), let's call these the "target files." The body pages of the target files don't have any content other than a chapter heading, so the body page content of the chapter is imported from the corresponding source files. 

Target files contain show/hide settings for the conditional text, so each set of target files turns into a unique book for its own product.

Obviously, any time I open up the target files I know exactly where the text and art is coming from (the source file).

My boss asks "Is there any way to look at the -source- file, and determine how many target files use the information?"

So far as I know Frame can't. What I think we'd need is either an Adobe or third-party application that from outside Frame can scan the source files, scan the target files, and build a list of any relationships between the two.

Does such a product exist? 

Rick Lippincott
Technical Writer
AS&EE 
American Science & Engineering 
829 Middlesex Turnpike
Billerica, MA  01821-3907
978-262-8807 (direct)
978-495-2335 (mobile)
978-262-8702 (fax)


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