Setting Up Filtering Groups

Before you can make use of filtering groups, your EDD must be set up to use the “Strings” attribute type for the attributes that you want to use with a filtering group. You can optionally add “default” values to the attribute definitions in the EDD, but that is not required (and may not be desirable). At a minimum, just change the “String” type to “Strings” and you should be all set.

The default DITA-FMx Topic and Map templates use the Strings type for all instances of the platform, product, audience, and otherprops attributes.

The following task creates two filtering groups named “ProductA” and “ProductB” and sets up unique values for each group that are available to apply to the attributes specified. Feel free to change the names and file paths to match those on your system.

  1. Using a text editor such as Notepad, create a file named filtergroups.ini in the user’s DITA-FMx folder (DITA-FMx > Open DITA-FMx Folder).
  2. Create a “General” section that defines the group names and the associated root paths, then create a section for each group that defines the attribute names and available values.
    [General] 
    ProductA=C:\projects\product-a 
    ProductB=C:\projects\product-b 
     
    [ProductA] 
    product=ProdALite|ProdAFull|ProdASimple 
    audience=Novice|Expert|Admin 
    platform=Windows|Mac|Linux 
    otherprops=001|002|003|004|005|006 
     
    [ProductB] 
    product=ProdBLite|ProdBFull 
    audience=User|Developer|Admin 
    platform=Windows|Mac|Linux|Solaris
  3. Save this file.

In FrameMaker, when you open a file in Product A (somewhere below the path C:\projects\product-a), when you run the Set Attributes command, and select one of the filtering attributes from the list, you will be able to select one or more of the values specified in the INI file.