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This approach will also allow you to easily add more Prod conditions if
needed.
Tammy Van Boening
Owner/Principal
Spectrum Writing, LLC
www.spectrumwritingllc.com
info -at- spectrumwritingllc -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Spectrum Writing
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 1:43 PM
To: 'McLauchlan, Kevin'; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Using conditions in multi-destination docs
The only warning/caveat that I see:
"Your [Prod1][Prod2] arrives from the factory with default
network settings. Before using the appliance configure
for your network as follows:
>From personal and frequent experience, conditionalizing [Prod1][Prod2]
right
in the middle of a sentence with two conditions can get tricky and messy,
especially if you don't conditionalize the necessary spacing before and
after correctly and it results in a lot of extra cleanup/fix time.
My suggestion:
"Your [Prod1]arrives from the factory with default
network settings. Before using the appliance configure
for your network as follows:
"Your [Prod2] arrives from the factory with default
network settings. Before using the appliance configure
for your network as follows:
and conditionalize each statement with Prod1condition or Prod2condition as
appropriate. This approach can save you lots of grief and time later on!
HTH,
TVB
Tammy Van Boening
Owner/Principal
Spectrum Writing, LLC
www.spectrumwritingllc.com
info -at- spectrumwritingllc -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of McLauchlan, Kevin
Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 1:34 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Using conditions in multi-destination docs
For a doc set that can be used with either Prod1 or
Prod2, can I get away with just two condition tags:
- notProductOne
- notProductTwo
Example text would be something like:
"Your [Prod1][Prod2] arrives from the factory with default
network settings. Before using the appliance configure
for your network as follows: "
Each time a product name appeared it would be a pair with
both elements condition tagged. [Prod1] would have condition
notProductTwo, and [Prod2] would be tagged notProductOne.
I would do the same with paragraphs and whole topics/pages
that applied to just one or the other.
Am I overlooking a situation where a third condition would
come in handy (or be literally indispensible)? Assume, for
now, that only the two output versions are needed for the
next year or three.
By default anything that's untagged appears in the output
regardless of the product, since it should be common to both.
I can't shake the nagging feeling that I'm going to get
halfway through the project and suddenly regret not having
wielded a third tag in a bunch of places. Darn it...
Kevin McLauchlan
Senior Technical Writer
SafeNet, Inc.
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Help & Manual 5: The all-in-one help authoring tool. True single- sourcing
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Try the latest Doc-To-Help 2009 v3 risk-free for 30-days at: http://www.doctohelp.com/
Help & Manual 5: The all-in-one help authoring tool. True single- sourcing --
generate 8 different formats and as many different versions as you need
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