Working with Qualifiers

For all but the simplest of conversions, you’ll need to use qualifiers to properly identify and wrap like named elements used in different structures.

Qualifiers are labels that are assigned to a mapping or wrapping rule to allow you to distinguish the resulting element from other like-named elements in later wrapping rules. Qualifiers can also be used to assign labels to multiple different types of elements so you can refer to groups of elements without naming each type in later wrapping rules. If used, a qualifier label is included in the third column of a mapping or wrapping rule.

There are no fixed rules about how to naming conventions for qualifiers. As you develop conversion tables, you’ll likely come up with your own naming conventions that make sense to you and work best for your content. We’ll describe one method here, but the best method is the one that “works.”

The best way to understand how qualifiers work is to review a working conversion table. The FM2DITA sample files include a conversion table that has been fully annotated (in the fourth column). We recommend that you read through that file.

...