Make text condition selection persistent

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Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Can the Insert Text Condition dialog pop up with the previously-selected type already checked?

Not universally helpful, but would save a lot of mousing / clicking when one is going through a project to make multiple segments or chapters optional for a given build.
Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Re: Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

Are you aware that you can copy & paste conditions?
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
Tim Frost
Posts: 319
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:45 pm

Re: Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Tim Frost »

If this suggestion is implemented, the persistence would have to survive selection of 'else' and 'endif'. It is this which makes copying and pasting impractical, since it would be dangerous to insert a whole bunch of copied 'if' directives and then go back and hope to match them with copied 'endif' markers as a separate exercise.
Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

Re: Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Rainer, in my case, the comments / questions already exist and/or are being placed there from output edited by a developer or executive. As a result, I've been selecting the comment then applying the condition. Cut-and-paste would work for inserting new conditions - that is, for typing in new material between the IF and END - but not so much for existing or imported text.

Tim, I'm not quite following. When I select my condition from the Insert Text Condition pop-up dialog, IF and END wrap themselves around the selected text that I'm placing the condition on. Because I was working on already-commented H+M content plus copying in comments & questions from Word output (created so others could edit & comment), I didn't use cut and past of END and IF...
Rainer Oehry
Posts: 102
Joined: Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:47 pm

Re: Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Rainer Oehry »

Dave,

I regularly need to wrap existing text in one of two conditions. Sometimes the conditional texts are isolated, sometimes they follow each other back to back. For that I have three additional topic tabs open: one with condition one plus ENDIF, one with condition 2 plus ENDIF, and one with condition1—ENDIF—condition2—ENDIF directly following each other. As there is no other content in these topics, pressing CTRL-A easily highlights just these two resp. four condition markers.

Now with a click on the respective tab, followed by CTRL-C, I copy the required condition/ENDIF pair to the clipboard. I then go to the topic where the conditions need to be applied, click at the starting point for the condition and press CTRL-V — the condition and the ENDIF marker get inserted. Then I click on the ENDIF marker (it is higlighted), and then dragdrop it to the end position of the conditional text.

When the required condition markers are in the clipboard already, then wrapping an existing text in a condition requires just four actions: click at the starting location, CTRL-V to enter the marker pair, click the ENDIF marker to highlight it, and then dragdrop it to the end position of the conditional text. For me this works much faster than opening the conditions window and selecting a condition, as it does not require to constantly switch between selecting a condition and the ENDIF marker to insert.

I do this repeatedly, until all condition markers for this condition are set. If I need to apply other conditions, I switch to the appropriate topic tab (one click), press CTRL-V to copy the condition/ENDIF pair to the clipboard (the condition markers are already highlighted) and click on the tab of my working topic, and then I apply this condition wherever it is needed.

When there is conditional text back to back, I click in the middle between the two texts, insert the two condition pairs from the clipboard, dragdrop the first condition to the beginning of the first text and then dragdrop the second ENDIF marker to the end of the second text, leaving the ENDIF—condition2 markers in between the two texts.

There might be still better workflows for your special needs. I could imagine that using a programmable keyboard or mouse could even speed up things further ...
Regards,

Rainer
Head of Technical Writing & Knowledge Management
TIG Technische Informationssysteme GmbH, Rankweil, Austria
Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

Re: Make text condition selection persistent

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Thanks, Rainer, for the scenario description. Unfortunately, I have just had a major revision need handed to me, and I'll have to work through the steps later.
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