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How do you pass DITA profiling attributes (platform, etc.) using the SDL Publication Manager when creating PDF output?

Paul Arellanes

Hello, 

We are using SDL Tridion Docs 13 SP2.

How do you use "DITA Profiling / Conditional Text" with the SDL Publication Manager?  We have a lot of content that uses the standard DITA platform attribute to conditionally filter between 'desktop' versus 'mobile app' environment.  For example,

<p platform=“desktop”>Do this when on a desktop environment.</p>

<p platform=“mobile”>Do this when in the mobile app.</p>



How do we set and manage the default DITA profiling attributes (product, platform, audience, rev, props, and otherprops) using the SDL Publication Manager to generate PDF and HTML output?


thank you
paul
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  • 0

    Hi Paul,

    Tridion Docs does not natively support DITAVAL processing during publishing. Instead, it uses SDL’s “ishcondition” processing. Like DITAVAL, ishconditions enable you to identify conditional text, but in a more flexible manner.

    You can use the SDL Condition Manager desktop application to centrally manage your organization’s conditions. To apply these conditions, authors can either specify the values directly using the @ishcondition attribute (for example, <p ishcondition="platform=desktop">) or by using the UI provided in the SDL Authoring Bridge. To use the UI, in either XMetaL or Oxygen, select SDL Tridion Docs > Conditional Text > Set Condition. An author can then select from the list of conditions defined in Condition Manager and even create complex (AND/OR) conditions, if necessary.

    Once you have applied your ishconditions to your content, you can select which conditions to include in your outputs on the Conditions tab in Publication Manager. Please note that you define one set of conditions for all outputs in one publication.

    To achieve your example of one set of content for “desktop” and another set of content for “mobile”, you would create two publications; one assigned to each condition. Even though you have two separate publication objects, they could reference the same maps and topics, so you are not actually managing two discrete sets of content.
  • 0 in reply to Josh Steen

    Hello Josh,

    Thank you for the response.  What you said makes sense, however, we have several projects that have 1000's of DITA files that already use the natively supported attributes, so we can not use your recommendation.  Is there a way to pass the DITAVAL values using the command line to generate the PDFs?

    thank you

    paul 
  • 0

    I second Josh's answer. As the full User Experience is much better using @ishcondition from writing over management up to publishing.

    An approach often used is to convert the static DITA condition dimensions (platform, audience, etc) into @ishcondition. Content Importer does that for you, see TD14 - Conversion phase 

    If you stay within those limited condition names (platform, audience, etc)  you can convert again to file system OASIS DITA - so no vendor lock in. In the mean while you get all features as suggested.

    A workaround could be to create an Other (before Template) object where you attach you ditaval file, that Other object you assign to the Publication Version as resource. This would allow even baseline version selectioning. I expect the resource to get exported while publishing, where some custom code could pick it up to pass it to DITA-OT.

    -Dave