Minimising post-processing of eaDocX documents

[Heather Wallace]

I love the flexibility of eaDocX, but having just been through another major document production run with little time for sleeping, I thought it worth noting some of the post-processing that really adds to the time to publish from the output. My team currently uses corporate version 3.3.10 and 3.3.15, so if any of this is already addressed in 3.4 I’ll be happy to test it there.

1. Adjusting header level upwards. When an inline related element is inserted with an overall heading for the set of related elements, the overall heading is one level below that of the headings for tabular related elements. This means I have to run certain sections in draft mode and manually adjust heading levels before running every other section in draft mode.
Example:
L1: System Functions
L2: SystemFunction : Name
Phase
Description
Diagrams
L3: Related Element : Informing Requirements (table)
L3: Related Element : Derived Requirements (table)
L4: Related Element : Use Cases (inline) – I have to manually move the “Use Cases” heading up to level 3
L5: UseCase : Name – I have to manually move this up to level 4
Phase
Description
Diagrams
L6: Related Element : Driving Requirements (table) – I have to manually move this up to level 5
L3: Relationship Element : System Element Functions (table of attributes of related element)

2. Removing the extra [space][paragraph^p] that follows each table of related elements

3. Inserting None using our standard paragraph text style after empty headings. In the example above (after level and space corrections) above the output would be:
1.2 SystemFunction: Detect Activity
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.1 Informing Requirements
Table
1.2.2 Derived Requirements
1.2.3 Use Cases
1.2.3.1 Use Case: Process Sensed Data
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.3.1.1 Driving Requirements
Table
1.2.4 System Element Functions
Table

but what I need is (difference is section 1.2.2):
1.2 SystemFunction: Detect Activity
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.1 Informing Requirements
Table
1.2.2 Derived Requirements
None
1.2.3 Use Cases
1.2.3.1 Use Case: Process Sensed Data
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.3.1.1 Driving Requirements
Table
1.2.4 System Element Functions
Table

4. Converting the “peudo-headings” generated when there is no content for a relationshipElement table. In the example above, if there are no system element functions traced, I get the following output (after correction of none:

1.2 SystemFunction: Detect Activity
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.1 Informing Requirements
Table
1.2.2 Derived Requirements
None
1.2.3 Use Cases
1.2.3.1 Use Case: Process Sensed Data
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.3.1.1 Driving Requirements
Table
System Element Functions: None

but what I need is (difference is section 1.2.4):
1.2 SystemFunction: Detect Activity
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.1 Informing Requirements
Table
1.2.2 Derived Requirements
None
1.2.3 Use Cases
1.2.3.1 Use Case: Process Sensed Data
Phase R1.3
Description text……
Diagram
1.2.3.1.1 Driving Requirements
Table
1.2.4 System Element Functions
None

Best regards,

Heather

[eadocX Support]

Taking your suggestions in order:
1. Related Element heading levels: I fixed this in 3.4

2. Extra spaces after tables. This is needed just in case the next thing to get printed is also a table, in which case Word will assume they are the same table and join them together. This is probably the longest-running eaDocX issue, and I look at it again for each release, and each time I try to remove the space, lots of other test cases fail horribly.

3. Have you tried switching Compact Document to FALSE?

4. What’s the formatting from ‘System Function’ to ‘System Element Functions’? Rel. element, or simple relationship attribute ?

[Heather Wallace]

Taking your answers in order.

1. Great. Will confirm when I have access to 3.4.
2. Shame. If we have to live with one problem we will.
3. Compact Document is already false. I have tried setting the “no relationship present” option to None, but this does not insert None under the relationship element headings. Also, we try to avoid this because it can place None where it is not wanted (where there is a relationship elemet with no heading, which is a method we use for tables of issues).
4. It is a table of simple relationship attributes.

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