New

Apply Conditions to Selected Steps (Not to the Element)

Product: Oxygen XML Author 27.1
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.