Thursday, July 28, 2011

AIT: Removing a Topic from a Version of a Book with Variants

Author-it 5.5 provides a greatly enhanced variant capability. It adds a hierarchy to the variants, which allow it to manage different versions of a book. As an example, we use the variant "designRev" with the following values:

A0
--> A1
    --> A2

This hierarchy allows us to create a book with versions A0, A1, or A2. But, what happens when I add a new topic to version A2? If I put it in the book TOC, then it will show up in versions A1 and A0 as well. 

To solve this problem, follow these steps:
  1. Locate the topic in the library.
  2. Right click on it.
  3. Choose Variant --> Convert to Variant
  4. Select the checkbox next to designRev and then click the checkbox for A2 beneath it.
Now, open the book and select A2 from the variant filter. The topic is shown in the TOC. If you select A0 or A1 from the variant filter, the topic is still in the TOC, but it has a strike-through and will not appear in the output.