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The Answer:
Yes I've tried it, and it was a success. FrameMaker and conditional text
seem perfect for what you want to do.
The Details:
I used a single-source, conditional text approach to create a set of
training guides: two (very similar)versions of the participant guide and one
facilitator's guide (which included all of the text of both participant
guides). While there were some tricky things, it was by far easier to manage
one complicated set of docs than edit three separate sets of docs in
parallel.
The only major problem I encountered wouldn't be relevant in your situation
-- I needed to have cross-references in the facilitator's guide to the page
numbers that the participant's see in their versions... I eventually worked
it out, but not without a bit of hand wringing.
Anyway, I think the primary thing that can be confounding with conditional
docs is formatting (paragraph spacing and page breaks). By carefully
planning (and adjusting as necessary) your paragraph tag settings for space
above/below parag, keep with next/previous, and orphan/widow, you should be
able to create manuals that don't require "tweaking" every time you change
your show/hide settings.
Other things to consider:
** If you have content that needs to be in 2 out of 3 versions, you may need
to use six different conditions: A, B, C, A+B, A+C, and B+C. If you mark the
same text with more than one condition, you may end up with unexpected
results when you show just one condition.
** Even if you want the end result to print all black text, you'll probably
want to set each condition to a different color while you're working on the
files. When you're ready to print, it's easy to switch the conditions to
black, then import conditional text settings across the book.
** Be very careful about conditionalizing (is that a legit word?) paragraph
tags, anchors and markers. There are good reasons to include and exclude
tags & markers to achieve different results. Accidentally including or
excluding them from the conditional setting can cause a lot of confusion
when you start hiding conditions. Here are a couple problematic examples
that give an idea of things to keep in mind:
-- You place a condition on a <$startrange> or <$endrange> index marker, but
not its companion.
-- You make an entire paragraph conditional, but it contains an anchor for a
table (or graphic) that should appear in all versions. Even if the text
within the table is unconditional, it will be hidden when the table's anchor
is hidden.
-- There are three different versions of the last sentence in a paragraph.
You accidentally include the paragraph tag when you conditionalize the third
version of the sentence.
Hope that helps,
Adam Korman
<akorman -at- epicor -dot- com>
-----Original Message-----
From: Merrick, Tim [mailto:tim -dot- merrick -at- LSIL -dot- COM]
Sent: Friday, July 09, 1999 8:10 AM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: FrameMaker Single-Sourcing
The Questions:
Have any of you tried creating multiple deliverables from one FrameMaker
book? If so, was it a success or a nightmare? What are some things to
consider as I plan for the project? What traps can I avoid? I know this can
be done, but is it the best solution?
