Content output using conditions
You can use conditional profiling attributes to tailor the same document for different audiences, formats, or releases when you generate an output.
Almost all elements in IXIA CCMS Web support conditional profiling attributes. Conditional profiling attributes are applied in your topics to elements that are only for some guides or contexts. You can include or exclude these elements in the final output based on what information you want to appear for that guide. You can even use conditional profiling attributes in your maps to include or exclude entire topics or submaps. This lets you make comparatively minor edits to a few maps and topics, instead of having duplicates of all the topics and maps for each guide or context.
Application of conditional processing
CCMS Web records the attribute values that you enter. When you generate
an output, you can apply a ditaval
to systematically include or
exclude elements with particular values. 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.
For example, you can set the ditaval
to include all the
@audience
attributes with the value
novice and exclude all those attributes with the value
admin. If you apply this ditaval
when
generating an output, the output will exclude only the elements and topics with the
value admin for the @audience
attribute. So
if a topic is shared between an admin guide and a guide for novice users, any
content in it for admin can be excluded for the novice users. This lets you reuse
the same topic while still having information targeted to specific users.
There are a few points to keep in mind when including or excluding content.
-
If you exclude a topic that has any children in a map, then the action also excludes all the children of the topic.
- If you exclude a topic from a map, then you must also add a conditional profiling attribute to
every reference in the map to exclude them. For example, you must add a
conditional profiling attribute to any links to the topic from cross references
in another topic or a
reltable
in the map.
Definition of conditional processing attributes
Before a value can be used for a conditional processing attribute, you must define it somewhere in IXIA CCMS. If a topic contains a value this is not allowed, CCMS Web flags it as invalid.
You can define conditional processing attribute values in a few different places, such as a subject scheme map in IXIA CCMS Desktop or through the conditionaltext.xml configuration file by a system administrator. More information on defining conditional processing attributes are the related guide IXIA CCMS Desktop User Guide.