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About Condition Tags

A condition tag is a marker that you can apply to different areas of your content so that some sections show up in some of your outputs but not in others. It is just one of the many single-sourcing features that you can use in Flare.

Condition Tags and Single-Sourcing

"Single-sourcing" is a fancy term that means something very simple—to produce multiple results from one source. In Flare, you can make use of single-sourcing in many different ways.

One way to single-source content is to take advantage of multiple output formats and condition tags. How does it work? Each target in your project is a potential output (using a specific output format, such as DotNet Help or WebHelp). You can create and apply condition tags to content. Then you associate the condition tags to your different targets as necessary, so that some content appears in some targets but not in other targets. This way, you do not need to create a separate project for each output that you want to produce. If most of the content for your outputs is similar, there is no need to rewrite it in another project. Simply specify which sections to include or exclude in which targets through the use of condition tags.

example

Let's say you need to create two PDFs from your project—one for beginning users and another for advanced users. Rather than creating two separate projects, you can put all of the content into a single project. Then you can create one condition tag called "Beginner Manual" and another condition tag called "Advanced Manual." After that, you can apply the "Beginner Manual" condition tag to the content that belongs only in the manual for beginners, and you can apply the "Advanced Manual" condition tag to the content that belongs only in the manual for advanced users. Finally, you associate one target in your project with the beginner manual (and its condition tag) and another target with the advanced manual (and its condition tag).

Condition Tag Integration with Mimic and Capture

If you are also using MadCap Mimic or Capture (or both), you can use condition tags that exist in your Flare project. This is similar to the variable integration that exists with these products.

example

Let's say that you have created two condition tags in a Flare project in order to send parts of your content to different outputs—one condition tag called "Beginner" and the other called "Advanced."

Now suppose you insert a picture into that Flare project and then open the image in Capture in order to edit it. Because you inserted the image into the project, a connection already exists between the Flare project and the image while you work on it in Capture.

This means that if you attempt to apply condition tags to the image while it is in Capture, you will have access to the "Beginner" and "Advanced" condition tags that you created in the Flare project.

For more information, see the online Help provided with Mimic and Capture.

Basic Steps

Following are the basic steps involved with condition tags.

Add condition tag set A condition tag set is used to hold condition tags you create for your project. Flare provides you with an initial condition tag set, which contains two condition tags (PrintOnly and ScreenOnly) to help get you started. You can create as many additional condition tags as you want for that condition tag set. However, if for some reason you want more condition tag sets to hold even more condition tags, you can easily add them. See Adding Condition Tag Set Files.
Create condition tags Within a condition tag set, you can create as many condition tags as you need. See Creating Condition Tags.
Apply condition tags to content After you create condition tags, you can apply them to the appropriate content in your project. You can apply condition tags to many different elements in your project, including files that make up the project (e.g., topics, snippets, images, style sheets, TOCs, targets), full paragraphs, text within paragraphs, table rows and columns, TOC entries, and index keyword markers. See Applying Condition Tags to Content.
Associate condition tags with targets After creating and applying condition tags, you need to tell Flare what your target should do with the condition tags that you have created and applied. Should content with a particular condition tag be included in or excluded from that target? See Associating Condition Tags with Targets.

Note: Condition tags are not supported if you are generating a target using the DITA output type, in the sense that you cannot include or exclude condition tags for that DITA output. Therefore, when you open a DITA target, the options in the Conditional Text tab are disabled. However, DITA-specific condition tag attributes are preserved in Flare when you import from DITA; the DITA attributes are converted to condition tag sets in Flare. In fact, you can create custom condition tag sets in Flare that can be useful when you generate DITA output from Flare. You simply need to make sure that the condition tag sets follow the established DITA naming conventions for those attributes: condition tag sets can be named "audience," "product," "platform," "props," and "otherprops." When you generate the output, the condition tag sets are converted to the appropriate DITA attributes.