2. The Assembly menu

The "Easy Profiling" add-on, included by default in all XMLmind XML Editor distributions, automatically adds a "Conditional Processing" sub-menu to the Assembly menu.

Menu item "Select Profile" allows to associate a profile set (.profiles file) to an assembly.

However, conditional processing is never applied to the assembly itself. Conditional processing is applied to the realized document if the DocBook profiling XSLT stylesheets have been selected using "Options → Customize Configuration → Customize Document Conversion Stylesheets in XMLmind XML Editor - Online Help".

In consequence, in the case of assembly, unlike what happens for book, chapter, etc, profiling attributes and/or the selected/unselected profiles are never rendered on screen.

So why bother associating a profile set to an assembly?

The main reason to do this is that once a profile set has been associated to an assembly which has been declared as being a master document in XMLmind XML Editor - Online Help, all the resources (topic, chapter, section, etc) referenced by this assembly will automatically “inherit” the chosen conditional processing profile. More information in Section 3.1, “Associating the ".profiles" file to the map rather than to individual topics” in XMLmind XML Editor - Easy Profiling.
It may be convenient to use menu item "Set Profiling Attributes" to add profiling attributes to the filterin and filterout elements.

Select Output

An assembly may contain several structure elements. A structure element may specify several output formats (web, print, etc)^[1] .

When this is the case, you'll want to specify which structure you want to convert by the means of the "Convert Document" menu items and also which output format you target. Menu item "Select Output" displays a dialog box allowing this specification.

Figure 1. The dialog box displayed by menu item "Select Output"

Structure ID

The value of the xml:id attribute of the structure element to be converted. By default, it's the first structure found in the assembly.

Output format

One of the output formats specified in the structure selected using the above "Structure ID" combobox. By default, it's the value of the defaultformat attribute of the structure if any, the “implicit format” otherwise.

The “implicit format” matches output, filterin, filterout elements without any outputformat attribute.

Multiple output formats separated by ";" may be specified. For example, "web;print" means output format is "web" OR "print".

Check Assembly

Check the assembly being edited and all its referenced topics for all kinds of errors, including cross-reference errors and missing image resources.

This check task which can be lengthy is run in background. While this task is running, a non-modal dialog box displays all the errors and warnings found in the assembly being edited and all the topics referenced by this assembly. If no errors or warnings are found, the dialog box is automatically closed. Otherwise it stays opened allowing you to review each error or warning. After you are done, you'll have to close the dialog box by clicking Close if you want to be able to re-run Check Assembly.

Figure 2. The dialog box displayed by command Check Assembly

An assembly being an advanced specification, what part of this specification is checked by command Check Assembly?

The Structure ID and Output format specified using menu item Select Output are automatically taken into account by command Check Assembly.
If your assembly requires conditional processing (that is, profiling), then command Check Assembly may report false errors. These false errors are caused by the fact that the conditional processing step has not been applied to the realized document prior to the check step.
Example: two of the chapters referenced by assembly book.xml have xml:id="install". First chapter has also os="windows". Second chapter has also os="mac".
If you don't apply any conditional processing to the realized book.xml, you'll get a duplicate ID warning caused by xml:id="install".
On the other hand, if you apply, say, profile os="window" to the realized book.xml, you'll not have this duplicate ID error. Why that? Because by applying profile os="windows", second chapter (having os="mac") is excluded from the realized document prior to checking it.
That's why the Check Assembly command automatically takes into account last used profile whether this profile has been specified using Conditional Processing → Select Profile ^[2] or this profile has been specified as one or more XSLT stylesheet parameters (e.g. profile.os=windows) using the "Document conversion parameters" panel in XMLmind XML Editor - Online Help.
When such last used profile is detected by Check Assembly, this command displays a dialog box letting the user review this profile before performing the check.
Figure 3. The "apply last used profile" dialog box displayed by command Check Assembly

^[1]The outputformat attribute set on output, filterin, filterout elements allows to specify “classes” of output formats rather than actual output formats (PDF, DOCX, EPUB, etc).


1. Why read this document?		2.1. The "Convert Document" sub-menu