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BeccyH
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2022
Answered

Child projects at differing “levels” within parent TOC

  • January 12, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 153 views

Apologies if this is very difficult to interpret! One of those things that's tricky to explain...

 

Are there any known issues merging child projects at different "levels" with a parent's table of contents? For example, if my parent project had a single child project merged in to create an initial section/book, but then a second section/book ( say "chapter 2", where this section has been created within the parent itself) which consisted of multiple child projects merged in? To confirm - I'm not suggesting any *content* (by way of topics) within the parent project, simply some sections so I can have multiple children within the same book. I will ensure the child projects are all located at the same level in terms of the files themselves (as per the merged demo by Peter Grainge, which has been incredibly helpful!)

I've tried this myself and so far, so good... however my grand plan involves 33 child projects (!) so would love to know ahead if there are any reasons this might cause issues. I'm not overly fussed about manually editing links between the projects if required, however have experienced a weird issue previously where clicking on topics within the TOC (in the parent output) for a child project opens the correct page, but then "jumps" the highlight within the TOC itself. E.g. I click (in the TOC) on the third topic in my child, and it highlights (in the TOC) the third topic in the parent instead as if I'm viewing that page (when I'm not!) I *think* this issue is down to multiple things, not least (very, very) old Robohelp projects being upgraded and then used for both the parent and child projects. I'm essentially trying to start again with the projects, but really want to ensure I'm not going to suddenly be faced with issues if I do! 

I'm using Robohelp version 2020.6.76 and creating html5 outputs.

Thanks in advance 🙂

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Peter Grainge

    In my demo, each child is referenced in the TOC. Thus you have the parent TOC itself, then a link to each child. The outcome is a merged TOC showing the parent's TOC followed by each child's TOC, The latter might have one top level section in which case only that will show or it might have multiple sections only in which case all of them will show below the parent TOC.

     

    What I think you want is to have the user see the parent TOC then a section that has to be expanded to see more than one child project rather than seeing them all at once. Is that the case? 

     

    I think you also want the parent TOC to have pages that are in fact in a child project. Is that correct and if so, how have you set up the link to the child project? 

     

    You want to be sure you are not building up issues? If I am following you correctly it's not an assurance I would give you. That doesn't mean they would be insurmountable, simply you might find some.

    ________________________________________________________
    My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

    1 reply

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
    Community Expert
    January 12, 2022

    In my demo, each child is referenced in the TOC. Thus you have the parent TOC itself, then a link to each child. The outcome is a merged TOC showing the parent's TOC followed by each child's TOC, The latter might have one top level section in which case only that will show or it might have multiple sections only in which case all of them will show below the parent TOC.

     

    What I think you want is to have the user see the parent TOC then a section that has to be expanded to see more than one child project rather than seeing them all at once. Is that the case? 

     

    I think you also want the parent TOC to have pages that are in fact in a child project. Is that correct and if so, how have you set up the link to the child project? 

     

    You want to be sure you are not building up issues? If I am following you correctly it's not an assurance I would give you. That doesn't mean they would be insurmountable, simply you might find some.

    ________________________________________________________
    My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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    BeccyHAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 12, 2022

    Hi Peter,

     

    Thanks so much for your speedy response.

     

    What I think you want is to have the user see the parent TOC then a section that has to be expanded to see more than one child project rather than seeing them all at once. Is that the case? Yes - this is exactly it. 

     

    I've got this going on in my parent project:

     

     

    ...where Childone then looks like this:

     

     

    ...and thus combined I'm getting an output like this:

     

     

    I think you also want the parent TOC to have pages that are in fact in a child project. Is that correct and if so, how have you set up the link to the child project? No, I don't think this is needed... I'm just setting up *sections* in the parent, and it seems in Robohelp 2020 doesn't actually allow for these to link to a topic:

     

     

    (whereas in 2019 I would add a "book" which could indeed be linked to a topic too)

    Then in the parent output, the default topic is set to the child project, Childone.rhpj, which has it's own default topic... thus when opened initially, my output is looking something like the below (which is fine -  I have no issue with the books in the TOC being open/closed initially)

     

     

    So all-in-all, I'm quite happy that currently the setup is how I wanted. I didn't expect complete reassurance that this somewhat complex structure wouldn't potentially lead to some issues... was more interested in if anyone was going to chime in with an immediate "woah, definitely don't do that as you'll cause the world to end!" Or perhaps a more realistic issue with our user manual that would amount to the same thing, from my PoV 😉 

     

    Anyway, I think I'll proceed in due course as the projects seem to be currently passing the tests I'm throwing at them. Thanks again for the response and I'll post here again if anything seems to go horribly wrong (so as to be a warning for others). 

     

    Kind regards, Beccy

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