When you select Generate Output, the Generate Output window
appears, displaying checkboxes for conditions within your content. The conditions that
appear depend on what attributes you have assigned within the content.
For example, if you assigned @product="widget" to some elements within the topics used in the
map, then a checkbox for widget is present. If you also assigned @product="gadget" to
some elements, then a checkbox for gadget is also present.
You can use these checkboxes to include or exclude marked content from your output. The
way these checkboxes work is not completely logical, but it's important to understand.
Let's say you have a map with a bunch of topics. Each topic contains some elements marked
@product="gadget," @product="thingy," and @product="widget." When you select
Generate Output, the window looks something like this:
If you leave all checkboxes unchecked, you're telling the Output Generator to
include everything—all conditions—in your output. Now you might conclude from this that
an unchecked box means "include." You'd be logical but you'd be wrong. An unchecked box
only means "include" when all boxes are unchecked.
As soon as you check a box, the whole picture changes. When you check a box, the meaning
of that checked box becomes "include" and the meaning of unchecked boxes becomes
"exclude." So, in this example, you're telling the Output Generator to include content
marked @product="gadget" or @product="widget" but exclude content marked
@product="thingy":
One implication of this approach is that if you want to use the checkboxes to
exclude, you have to have more than one checkbox under a given attribute. For example,
say your content contains one value for @otherprops, "thing1". You want to exclude all
content where @otherprops="thing1" and include everything else. When you go to generate
output, you have only one checkbox under otherprops: thing1. With only one checkbox,
obviously you can't force the CMS to make a distinction between a checked and an
unchecked value for @otherprops. In such a case, what you need to do is add another
value for @otherprops somewhere within your content, for example, "all". You only need
to add this other value to one topic. Doing so creates a second checkbox under
otherprops for that value. You can then check that box and leave the thing1 box
unchecked to force the exclude.
