Book of Books with conditions

[Boreas]

Hello,
I have 3 ditamaps (for 3 documents) built from the same set of files. Some of these files have conditionilized text to support one of the 3 document output. So I use filter A for document Version A, filter B for Document B etc. I can generate the documents and get the proper information for each version. This works fine.
This is where it becomes tricky.
What we want to do, is to create a Root Map that includes all 3 ditamaps. We want to generate a WEbHelp of the Root map and get the 3 documents filtered out properly.
I created a Book Map, and included all 3 dita maps. Then, I edited the variables to assign the filter value at the ditamap level.
Is there a way to generate the Rootmap in such a way that the appropriate filter be applied to each ditamap? Basically, can we use 3 filters at the time, but each on a specific ditamap of the RootMap.

Regards.

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

The deciding factor is whether the filters are mutually exclusive. If all the filters define a filtering condition based on the same DITA profiling attribute (for example audience or platform) but each filter sets a different value for that profiling attribute then the filters are exclusive and can't be applied in the same DITA operation on the root map. At least not in DITA 1.2 which is the current version of the DITA schema implemented by DITA authoring tools like Oxygen. The upcoming DITA 1.3 schema will add a ditavalref element to this effect but that will not be implemented in the near future.

If on the other hand the filters are not exclusive, for example each filter sets a value to a different profiling attribute then all the filters can be merged into a single DITAVAL file which can be applied to the root map, and each profiling attribute in the DITAVAL file will be applied to a different sub-map of the root map. Merging the different profiling attributes into a single DITAVAL file is as simple as adding all the <prop action="exclude"> and <prop action="include"> elements into a single .ditaval file which can be applied in the DITA Maps Manager view for Author editing and in the DITA transformation dialog box for generating an output format based on the source DITA XML files.