Tag: author-it

Author-it: Quick Search ‘q’ Bug

I have encountered the ‘q’ bug several times, without any apparent cause. Normally, one needs to type Cntl-q to open the Quick Search dialog. The ‘q’ bug is when typing the letter q opens the  dialog (without holding down the Cntl key). This makes it impossible to use any words with the letter ‘q’.
The solution to the problem (until they come out with a fix for the bug) is to follow this procedure:
  1. Press and release the Cntl key one time. 
That’s it! Operation should then work normally.

AIT: Book Properties in Word

I can never find the link in the AIT knowledge base to the list of the book properties along with the corresponding Word document properties. Here they are:
  • the Title property stores the information in the Title field
  • the Super title property stores the information in the Subject field
  • the Version property stores the information in the Keywords field, and
  • the By line property stores the information in the Author field. 

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.

AIT: Highlighting Variants

This post describes how I use highlighting and release states in Author-It to make reviewing documents easier. This procedure assumes that you have a main book along with another book that uses variants of the objects in the main book. The variants are either variant topics or embedded variant topics. 
By using this procedure, the reviewer can review one complete document, and then just review the highlighted sections in the second document.
Setup

1. Open AIT Administrator
2. Select Security -> Release States
3. Add a new state:

a. Right click -> Add State
b. State name: HighlightVar
c. Right click over the new state, select Check Row
d. Click the box near the end of the row for HighlightVar / Review Color
e. Select yellow
f. Check that the boxes are checked for all relevant users

4. Do step 3 again to add the state DoNotHighlightVar, but skip steps d and e.

5. Close AIT Administrator
6. Open AIT
7. In your library, sort the objects by variant
8. Select (using Ctrl+click) all variants of the default object
9. Right mouse click, then select Change Release State -> HighlightVar

The variant of the main document can now be published with highlighted sections.

Print Without Highlighting

1. Go to the search tab
2. Select HighlightVar from In State
3. Click on Find Now
4. The search result shows all of the objects with highlighting
5. Select all of the objects
6. Right click -> Change Release State -> DoNoHighlightVar
7. Publish

Print with Highlighting
1. Go to the search tab
2. Select DoNoHighlightVar from In State
3. Click on Find Now
4. The search result shows all of the objects with highlighting
5. Select all of the objects
6. Right click -> Change Release State -> HighlightVar
7. Publish

Thanks to Miriam Lottner at Tech-Tav for pointing me in the right direction.

Author-It: Pasting Text with Formatting

For those of you using Author-It, there is an unfortunate feature that text that is pasted into a topic (from a Word doc), gets a “No Paragraph Style”. You then have to select the text and apply an AIT style. At the latest Author-It User Group meeting, the way to get around this was revealed.
Follow these steps:
  1. From the main window select: Import -> (Transformation) Profiles
  2. Select Word Documents
  3. Click Properties
  4. Check the box next to Use for Paste
Now, when you want to paste text into AIT, click:
Paste -> Paste Using Import Profile -> Word Documents

That’s it. Happy pasting.