🚀 go-pugleaf

      It just seems to us at this point that a strategy based on developing
      and maintaining documents that contain an ever-growing number of condition
      tags -- especially if any of those conditions someday, somehow, become
      mutually exclusive -- seems more complicated and administration-intensive
      (even riskier) than does the strategy of parallel container documents.




Agreed. I am in that boat. On my last project, sudden and hasty project decisions and a tight deadline required that I create some conditions to meet a deadline.

That document uses about 10 conditions.

The problem is, I want some of that content to be modular with other projects, but I don't want to carry over all those conditions. So, while I met the deadline (which was my top-most priority, though I wanted it not to be), my workarounds have made more work over the long-haul for me. I had no choice in this, and I knew the long-term consequences.

      I'm willing to have someone show me the error of our ways: That was the
      motivation behind my original post. At this point, however, I still perceive
      conditional text as a technique for "tweaking" an otherwise sound strategy
      of modular content and parallel container documents.




I mostly disagree. Conditional text in FrameMaker is a sound part of a single-sourcing strategy. But, it has limitations. I'd say 5 or 6 conditions are the max. I use other techniques, too, including chapter inclusion and exclusion, and paragraph tag inclusion and exclusion. When I author my content, I do so with consideration to where the content is used. I find that the clarity of my documentation improves when I think this way and my ability to use my single-sourcing methods also improves by organizing the content more effectively.

Cheers,

Sean