I think this should be possible in some ingenious manner - please excuse the lengthy post.
I need to produce different documents for each of the people who use my work. It would be great if I could define different ‘compiles’ for each user group, so that group A got the full whack, group B a reduced set and group C the minimum, all from a single master file. At the minute I go crazy with differing files and versions. I have the intuition that I should be able to do this with styles (or maybe some other manner?) and would be grateful for suggestions.
I write ceremonies, which include several different text elements. These are the things I want to either include or exclude, and which I currently distinguish within the document by colour: I then manually manipulate the colour groups to get my different versions. I think this should be possible automagically.
I’m not tied to the colour logic: but t helps to explain in words an otherwise finicky concept.
a) Black text. This is always required in every compile, as it is the words that will be used in the ceremony. It’s the minimum, all compiles will include.
b) Blue text. This is usually required in some compiles, but not all. They are the ‘complete stage directions’ needed in the shooting script. It’s required in many - but certainly not all - compiles.
c) Red text. This is text that still needs revision. It may be required in some compiles. Red text will later be converted (by a human) to either black or blue.
d) Green text. Comments, observations and instructions. This is never required in printed compiles, but is useful to share with co-authors and users.
Any ideas?
Richard
To compile only part of a document, what you described as text color, I’d use styles + different compile formats.
(Create a compile format for each “situation”, removing from each of them whatever styles need to be removed.)
Using styles in the editor will be compatible with your color coding if you set your styles to “save all formatting” :
You may even want to use the highlight box to make it even clearer in the editor.
→ You could then have all your text in a black font, but with different background colors per style :
→ Note that those background colored boxes can’t be compiled as you see them in the editor. If you need the color coding in the compiled output, stick to font color. (Or have your font revert to the desired color per style, in the styles pane of your compile formats. – A bit more complicated than simply having your font already of the desired color in the editor, but functional nonetheless.)
If you need to do this for parts of a paragraph (rather than on a whole paragraph basis), then set your styles to be character attributes.
(They have to be created as such. You can’t turn a paragraph style into a character attribute style.)
You’ll be able to set part of the paragraph to be deleted at compile as per the compile format you’ll be then using.
(And you can still use the colored background boxes with this setting if you prefer that to using font color.)
Once you have your styles set up, you just need to apply them to what is what (the different intended persons/situations you described in your post), then create the compile formats (from which you set the needed style(s) to be deleted) for each different situation.
– All text but green
– All but red & green
– Black text only.
– or whatever the combination you need.
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Vincent,
Thanks a bunch for this. I’ve followed your very clear instructions, played with it for a couple of days to fine-tune the styles and now it (largely) does what I want, so this is a massive step forwards. The styles seems to corrupt some margins, but that’s a different problem for another day. Thank you again.
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Just make sure you have the same formatting here :
than here :
… and your margins (indents, actually) etc should match.
