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Anonymous

Answered

Available Conditional Build Tag Expressions

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
October 25, 2007
31 replies
3122 views

I'm part of a team that works on a version control project that encompasses content across numerous business lines with a lot of shared content between them. This means that we use conditional tags quite a bit. I'm new to the group and have been playing around with the tags in the topic, previewing it, and then experimenting with different tag expressions to see what is made invisible and what remains.
But now, all of the tag expressions that I defined in the preview window while messing around are still present and I can't remove them. All of the new expressions really crowd out the standard set we use for legitimate testing and I just know this is going to piss my co-workers off.
Please, any help you can provide in undoing the useless clutter I've created would be greatly appreciated.

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Correct answer Captiv8r

Hi all

Hopefully Colum will pardon my intrusion into the thread. I believe the expressions that are created are added to the ProjectName.PSS file. One easy way to get at this is to right-click any topic, choose Topic Properties, then the File tab. Now click the Open Folder button. Bingo! You are now in the general area. If your topic is inside a folder, you may need to navigate up the tree once or twice to the root of it. There you should find the PSS file.

Edit the PSS file using Windows Notepad. My expressions were added at the bottom of the file.

Cheers all... Rick

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Apologies. There is one additional step that I had forgotten. You have to go to the layouts, right click and select Properties and then set the Build Expression to None.

If you do that and Save, then there are no expressions in the layouts and they all get deleted.

If you don't do that, an SSL might have several expressions listed before you delete the PSS / CPD and afterwards it will just have whichever one was selected in the layout at the time.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Deleting the PSS and the CPD should have removed them from both locations. Can you please clarify what happens after deleting the PSS and CPD?

Are you still seeing them in layouts?

Are you still seeing them in topic preview?

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J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Deleting the PSS and CDP file deleted all build tag expressions that I had manually created in Preview mode. However, the build tag expressions that are part of a build tag (such as WebHelp, Printed Documentation, and so on) are still listed in Preview. I'm assuming Adobe figures that you'll want to be able to preview topics using the expressions that are applicable to your output, so when you save a build tag with specific expressions, the expression is added to the list automatically (thereby saving you the trouble of doing it manually).

The build tag configurations are saved in files called <build tag>.ssl, so they are not deleted when you delete the PSS and CDP file.

J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Oh, I see -- an expression that is saved as part of a single source layout can't be removed from the expressions available for the topic preview. I'm not sure that that's how I necessarily want it to work, but it makes sense now at least.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

When you generate the help, are the expressions also showing in the dropdown there. Sorry to be labouring this but the solution has worked for everyone else so it is difficult to understand what is going wrong here.

Also are you using version control and could that be pulling something in?

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J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Yes, the same expressions are available when I go to generate a build from one of the layouts. I'm not using version control, so I'm not sure what could be happening....

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

We are talking about the build expressions and not the conditional tags in Project Manager?

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J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Yes, the items in the "Conditional Build Tag Expression" list in the topic preview window. The expressions I'd previously defined will not go away.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

You can delete the PSS file. (Make a backup of your project first but it shouldn't be necessary). If you delete that and the CPD, which also rebuilds, I have found the expressions are trashed reliably.

If you are using a version earlier than RH7, look at Opening Projects on my site. Earlier versions may lose some information that is easily rebuilt.

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J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Nope, I deleted both, and the expressions are still there in the preview window, even though neither the new nor the old PSS and CPD files have any mention of them. (I found someone with a copy of Access and was able to look through the tables.) I'd made sure to delete the .bak files too, and I even rebooted my machine to be superstitious. I'm using RH 7.00.145 on Windows XP.

So I'm guessing this info. must stored somewhere else, too.

A

Anonymous

It seems i now have a corrupted project file. I will have to start over again with a safe copy. This suggestion of yours will probably work, but it will be time consuming and difficult especially if the project keeps crashing. How much better it would be if there were just a simple mouse click to delete unwanted Preview Conditional Tag Expressions.

RoboWizard

Inspiring

Hi again

Indeed I couldn't agree more. If you (and others) would like to put this request in front of the eyes that can make a difference, Click here and complete the form you should find there.

Cheers... Rick

A

Anonymous

Well, Mr. Wizard,
renaming the .CPD file does work, like driving your car off a cliff onto rocks below. All the Preview Conditional Build Tag Expressions are gone, even the ones i wanted.

RoboWizard

Inspiring

Hi again

As long as you simply renamed the .CPD, you should be able to reverse the process. Then note the expressions you actually want to keep. Then repeat the process again. You might wish to create a new layout, then select and use the expressions you want to keep first. I'm thinking this may force an update to the PSS file and maybe recursively propagate the desired build expressions back into the new .CPD.

Cheers... Rick

A

Anonymous

:
This has been an unsolved problem for years. I never got a solution and am just coming back to RoboHelp, sadly. My first disappointment reopening the project was selecting preview and seeing all the conditional build tag expressions. I too had experimented with the boolean until getting the desired mix. Now I too have many unused and unwanted conditional build tag expressions in the Preview pull down menu. I do not know how to delete them. They are not listed in the PSS file and are thus not Global Build Tag expressions. They are some kind of Prevew Build Tag expressions. The only other file that is updated is the CPD file, but that is a coded file and not editable with notepad.

RoboWizard

Inspiring

Hi Fenway21117 and welcome to our community

You might try closing RoboHelp, renaming the .CPD, then restarting RoboHelp. It should re-create a new .CPD file as a result.

Give that a go and let us know how it turns out.

Cheers... Rick

J

Just_Mary

Known Participant

Deleting entries from the "Global Build Tag Expressions" section of the PSS file, and then deleting the CPD file, do not get rid of the build expressions when I reopen the project and preview a file.... Anyone have any other ideas of how to get rid of them? I don't have MS Access, so I can't open the CPD file and edit any database entries.

RoboColum_n_

Legend

There are no build expressions added to a project by default. There are two build tags added by default to the RHBUILDTAG.APJ file. Only when you define the expression is the entry added to the project's PSS file.

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