What are variants, and when to use them

Variants let you produce several versions of the same merge in one go – the same project, output in more than one form. Languages are the classic case: a single run that yields a German PDF and an English one.

Managing variants

Nearly every node has a Variants settings area, with a dropdown and a Manage Variants button. Manage Variants opens a window where you create, edit, and delete the variants for your project. Each variant has:

• a Name – e.g. Deutsch;
• a File Suffix – added to the output file name (de → mergedfile_de.pdf);
• a Locale – used for things like currency conversion and number or date formatting;
• a Colour – used to tint the variant’s tag on the nodes that belong to it.

The same Manage Variants list also appears in the Export area, so you can manage variants from either place.

"All Variants" is the default

In each node’s Variants dropdown, All Variants is selected by default. A node set to All Variants runs in every variant – it’s the shared baseline. You only assign a node to a specific variant when it should differ between them.

How variants run

You assign nodes to variants in the editor (next article), and the variants are produced at export – a single run can output every variant, each with its own file suffix. (See Exporting Multiple Variants in One Run.)

Next

Assign nodes to variants and learn the connection rules: Tagging Nodes for Variant Runs