3.7. Profiling

Another feature of the DocBook Open XSLs is the ability to filter out elements. This is like conditional text in FrameMaker.

Some paras ready to be profiled

<para>A common introductory paragraph.</para>
<para os="Windows">A paragraph specific to Windows.</para>
<para os="UNIX;MacOSX;Linux">A paragraph pertains to several UNIXes.
<phrase userlevel="beginner">When in doubt, use <userinput>man -k</userinput>
</phrase>
</para>

Running Saxon with profiling

java com.icl.saxon.StyleSheet -o sample.html sample.xml \
      ../html/profile-docbook.xsl \
      "profile.os=Windows" \
      "userlevel.os="beginner"

This behaves a little differently than FrameMaker. In FrameMaker, if you turn on a condition, then it appears even if it occurs within text that has been conditioned out.

Caution

Profiling, in part because it is more powerful than Frame's conditional text, provides an easy way for you to hang yourself.