expression - help!

From your description, I think it is as simple as:

A or cake or apple

Since cake/pie and apple/orange are each mutually exclusive, you do not need to specify something like cake andnot pie to show cake. When using expressions, it is not necessary to specifically hide something, especially if the conditions are mutually exclusive. Showing cake will not show pie UNLESS a para is tagged with both. I am assuming because they are mutually exclusive, you are not tagging a para with both. If you ARE then, you still want to show cake even though it is also tagged pie.

You state:

A, B, C, D (a para can be any or all of these, but only one can be chosen for output)

Again, if a para is tagged A and C and you want to show A, then simply state show A. If a para is tagged A and C, then A andnot C hides the paragraph. Again, do not state andnot to hide something unless you really do not want it to show, no matter what the other tags may be.

Also, if you want A to show but only if it is not tagged with B, C, or D, then you should try:

A andnot B andnot C andnot D or cake or orange

One issue that has always been unknown to me is how much of the expression does FrameMaker evaluate when determining what to show. In standard logic, the statement A or B is true if A is true, B is true, or both are true. Most computer programs stop the evaluation if A is determined to be true, because the whole statement is true no matter the value of B.

On the other hand, A and B is true only if both A and B are true. In this case, if A is true, then the computer must also evaluate B. If this is really what FrameMaker is doing, then putting the andnot's right after the A forces FrameMaker to evaluate the expression all the way to the first or. Putting them at the end means they may not be evaluated if A is true (that is, shown). But this may just be my way of understanding how expressions work. At least, it works for me.

By the way, I have used expressions to handle multi-conditioned text, and I had lots of problems with it, namely, FrameMaker crashed a lot. After the last project, I switched to using the AXCM plugin from West Street Consulting. It is free, but work only in structured FrameMaker.

Hope this helps,

Van

This sounds amazingly complicated - I'm assuming you're using the unstructured version of FM because I think going to structured would have allowed you to manage your content better.

Barring that, how about simplifying things by duplicating paragraphs and setting each with only 1 condition? Or using variables or text insets? Or creating separate books with fewer conditions? Just tossing ideas here ;

- I create an expression to exclude everything I don't want (that's a whole lot of ANDNOTs)

The FIRST point is that with expressions (unlike the show/hide way) you are specifying what you want to SHOW. Therefore, in most cases, you do not need to specify what you want to hide. Thus, in a very simple case (NOT your case) where each para is tagged with only one condition, either a, b, or c, you can set your expression to b, to show b and hide a and c. You do not need to andnot a and c.

But in your case, I think I understand what you are trying to do:

You want to show A but ONLY IF it is NOT tagged with either pie or orange.

You want to show cake but ONLY if it is tagged with A.

You want to show orange but ONLY if it is tagged with A.

My assumption is that any para can be tagged with (either cake OR pie) AND (apple OR orange) AND (A, B, C, and/or D, but at least one of the conditions);. So, using parentheses to make it clearer, your expression should be:

(A ANDNOT pie ANDNOT orange) OR (cake AND A) OR (apple AND A)

Now that I think about it, it simplifies to:

A ANDNOT pie ANDNOT orange

Every para has to be tagged with AT LEAST ONE province (A, B, C, and/or D), EITHER pie or cake, AND EITHER apple or orange. The fact that pie/cake and apple/orange are each mutually exclusive means that stating ANDNOT pie means that it must be cake. Stating ANDNOT orange means that it must be apple. Thus, you do not need to state to show cake and to show apple; by stating NOT pie and NOT orange, cake and apple are implied. The above expression DOES exclude B, C, and D BUT ONLY if it is not A. As stated above, you do not need to specify that B, C,and D are to be hidden; they will be hidden because they are not stated in the expression. SOME may show but only when also tagged with A.

Does this work? OR have I got it wrong again?

Van

Argus,

What FrameMaker supports is not really boolean in the sense you would have learned in Maths.

Since certain documents are hard to find on this adobe.com pages I attach an article I saved to PDF some time ago explaining the new condition expressions. After a glance at it seems to explain why "A" AND "B" does not do what you think it should.

https://acrobat.com/#d=Roh9MVcIM6CGMNB-0LFZVw

HTH,

- Michael

Put the file on acrobat.com

Argus,

Far and away, the best suggestion I can think of is to ditch all of this and structure your documents. Then you can use structural metadata to manage conditions, which is considerably more manageable and flexible. All of these explanations so far are so bewildering in their complexity... I'm not sure how anyone can deal with it.

I'm also not sure exactly when conditional text was introduced to FrameMaker, but I'd be willing to bet that we are getting close to 20 years ago. That means you are attempting to use 20-year-old technology to manage the intricacies of modern-day manufacturing and documentation. It has to be taking a big hit on the efficiency of your operations.

Russ

Sigh - it was so much easier with FM7/WW and I could use FM settings files to import condition settings...

As much as I favor a structured, attribute-based solution: You can still work the old way! If »never change a running system« is an argument. But if additional requirements may surface, I would rather clean up the mess and look for a structured solution.

- Michael

Argus,

As I learned from my experience with multiple conditions and expression, we tend to think of our conditions as divided into name-value pairs. As in:

province (name) can be A, B, C, D (values)

dessert (name) can be cake or pie (values)

fruit (name) can be apple or orange (values)

When I saw that FrameMaker had expressions, I thought they could easily handle multiple conditions. And they could IF FrameMaker allowed the addition of parentheses, as in:

(A or nothing) and (cake or nothing) and (apple or nothing)

But FrameMaker does not allow one to group the conditions like this. To FrameMaker, all conditions are equal; hence, it becomes necessary to add the ANDNOTs.

In a structured document, one can use attributes to assign conditions. In this case, there would be a separate attribute for province, another for dessert, and still another for fruit. This mirrors the way we (or at least I) actually think. In your case, you would filter for:

province = A

dessert = cake

fruit = apple

The element would show only if it had (A or nothing) and (cake or nothing) and (apple or nothing), which I believe is what you want to do.

Van

argus,

I can't address the question about RoboHelp. I can talk a bit about attributes, though. If you choose to use structural attributes, they completely replace native condition tags. Once you have your metadata (ie, conditions) set up, you can either use:

- FrameMaker's built-in "filter by attribute" expressions to produce the output you want

- My AXCM plugin (free) to manage conditions, which allows coloring and filtering based on attribute values.

In short, anything to do with native condition tags would generally not be used any more.

For help learning structured FM, you can take a class, but I really think that the best way is to sit down with the book and start messing around. Structured content and related technologies are best learned from the grassroots, because it is an extensible concept that has no absolute definition. The more you know about how the small pieces fit together, the better off you will be to design a process that works properly for you.

Russ