Working with ditavals

A ditaval is a set of rules on how to handle the conditional profiling attributes in the map and topics you are creating an output from. You can create a ditaval object and then use the Ditaval Editor to set the rules in it.

The ditaval can specify which values for conditional profiling attributes to include or exclude when generating an output. Conditional profiling attributes that are excluded do not appear in the final output.

Note: By default, if a ditaval does not specify whether to include or exclude a particular conditional profiling attribute, then it is automatically included in the generated output. To exclude a conditional profiling attributes, you must explicitly configure a ditaval to exclude it.

Once created and configured, you can then apply this ditaval to content when you generate an output. Using a ditaval ensures that conditions are always applied consistently to generated output.

Example of a ditaval configuration

For example, consider a map with three conditional profiling attributes and two possible values for each:

  • Platform: linux or windows
  • Audience: admin or writer
  • Release: T34 or B52

You might create one ditaval for each combination that you need to generate. The following code shows an example of how you would configure the ditaval for generating the Administration Guide for the B52 release on Linux:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
				<val>
				<prop action="include" att="audience" val="admin"/>
				<prop action="exclude" att="audience" val="writer"/>	
				<prop action="include" att="platform" val="linux"/>
				<prop action="exclude" att="platform" val="windows"/>
				<prop action="include" att="product" val="B52"/>
				<prop action="exclude" att="product" val="T34"/>
				</val>

Actions for conditional profiling attribute

In a ditaval, you can define additional actions for IXIASOFT CCMS Web to take beyond including and excluding. In Ditaval Editor, you can tell CCMS Web to take any of the following actions:

  • Flag: content is included, but it is flagged in the output through formatting. If you select this, you have additional options about how to format the flagged content. You can choose the style, color, and background to use.
  • Include: content is included in the output.
  • Exclude: content is excluded from the output.
  • Passthrough: content is included in the output but also retains the condition as part of the output.