Complex Profiling

Profiles are inherited by the children of a profiled element. For example, if you apply profiles to an entire chapter, all elements within that chapter inherit the same profile values. You can apply more restrictive profiling to individual child elements.

Select a specific element and its contents when you want to apply profiling. If you select a region of content within an element, the profiling is applied to the parent element containing the content region. Selecting a content region to apply profiling removes any other profiling that had been applied to elements within the parent element.

For this example, the profile classes Operating System and Security have the following profiling values:

Assume that your document includes two chapters, each containing two parallel sections that are profiled as follows:

Chapter	Section	Content	Applied Profiles
1	n/a	Information applicable to Windows 2000 and Windows XP users.	Windows 2000, Windows XP
	1.1	Information applicable to Windows 2000 and Windows XP users.	None
	1.2	Information applicable to Windows 2000 users only.	2000
2	n/a	Information applicable to all UNIX users.	UNIX
	2.1	Information applicable to all Customers using UNIX.	Customer
	2.2	Information applicable to all Employees using UNIX.	Employee

• Some elements may apply to more than one profile within a given profile class. In this example, chapter 1 applies to both the Windows 2000 and Windows XP profiles within the Operating System profile class. Be sure to include all profiles that apply.

• Selecting multiple profiles within a profile class means either value is valid. Depending on the settings for other profile classes, chapter 1 displays if the publish profile includes either the Windows 2000or the Windows XP profile (or both).

• Section 1.2 is exclusive to Windows 2000, so only the Windows 2000 profile is applied. Applying the UNIX profile is impossible because the parent element (that is, chapter 1) does not include the UNIX profile.

• Even though sections 2.1 and 2.2 do not further restrict the profiling within the Operating System profile class, sections 2.1 and 2.2 have applied profiles for another profile class. This is perfectly legal.