RE: Editors that support conditionals

Subject: RE: Editors that support conditionals
From: Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- nuot -dot- com>
To: "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 20:12:18 +0000

Okay, so here's an example. Let's say you want to end up three versions of the same document:

* Version A uses the phrase "technical writer" in multiple places.
* Version B is nearly identical, but uses the phrase "certified genius" in place of the phrase above.
* Version C uses the phrase "deity among mortals" instead.

In your source document, the phrase "technical writer" is formatted in Style A, "certified genius" is formatted in Style B, etc. In the source document, all three phrases are visible in sequence where they appear.

In Template A, Style A appears just as it does in the source document, but Styles B and C are defined as hidden. In Template B, Style B appears just as it does in the source document, but Styles A and C are defined as hidden.... etc.

To export the document, apply the appropriate template.

If you're concerned about someone messing with the styles after you export the document, you can instead skip the templates and just delete all instances of a given style from the source document. But that's less elegant, and I think most non-TWs are unfamiliar with Word styles.

-- Dan Goldstein

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Goldstein
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 3:04 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Editors that support conditionals

1. Make sure the source document is set up with proper paragraph styles.
2. Create character styles to mark the "sibling" versions of similar text.
3. Create a separate template for each sibling version, in which all but the relevant sibling styles are defined in that template as hidden.

Hang on, I'll have some examples for you as soon as I ward off these deadlines with my battle-axe...

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Harvie
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 3:00 PM
To: Dan Goldstein
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Editors that support conditionals

How do you tell an export from Word (or save-as or ??) to include text marked with character style A and exclude text marked with character style B?

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 3:56 PM, Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- nuot -dot- com> wrote:
Hi Andrew,

You can do that in Word, using character styles in a single document to generate the nearly-identical versions at will.

-- Dan Goldstein

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Harvie
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2016 2:00 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Editors that support conditionals

G'day all,

  We're all familiar with HAT programs that use conditionals to produce multiple targets from the same document. What I'm looking for today is a cheap-to-free text editor that can do something similar.

 ÂThe situation is that I've been asked to maintain a set of documents for the marketing department. Those documents are currently in Word format and are nearly identical. I rebel at the thought of trying to keep the matching bits up to date across documents. My first impulse was to transfer the whole thing to Flare and build multiple outputs, but that's not allowed since I have the only license here and someone else might need to edit.
 ÂA web search turned up LyX. Close, but I don't think it will work for us. (After three hours of trying and searching, I couldn't figure out how to override or edit a .Layout file to change the title font between serif and sans, for goodness sakes!)

 ÂOh, and this editor I'm searching for must be able to export a nicely-formatted document back to MS Word, with minimal post-processing.

Any suggestions?

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--

-- Andrew Harvie

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References:
Editors that support conditionals: From: Andrew Harvie
RE: Editors that support conditionals: From: Dan Goldstein
Re: Editors that support conditionals: From: Andrew Harvie

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