Area: DITA authoring – step-level conditional processing
Summary: Allow users to select multiple individual steps within a
<steps> element and apply a condition to only those highlighted steps, rather than automatically setting the condition at the <steps> container.Background / Current Behavior
When authors select multiple steps inside a topic and apply a conditional attribute, Oxygen currently assigns the condition to the parent <steps> element. This results in all steps inheriting the condition, even if the intention is to scope that condition to only the selected steps.
Problem Statement
Authors often need to conditionalize a subset of steps—for example, steps relevant only to a specific audience or platform—while leaving the rest of the procedure unconditioned. The current behavior forces a broader scope than intended, which leads to:
- Extra manual work (reapplying attributes one-by-one).
- Increased risk of errors or unintended conditional output.
- Reduced authoring efficiency and clarity.
Requested Change
Enable step-level conditional application for multi-selection:
- When a user highlights multiple
<step>elements (or<substeps>), and applies a condition, Oxygen should apply the condition to each selected step rather than the parent<steps>element. - Maintain existing behavior for single selection of a step.
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