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RobioPro
Participating Frequently
May 23, 2024
Question

How to edit RoboHelp TOC in a text editor

  • May 23, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 622 views

I work with a team that uses RoboHelp. I do some editing — but not enough to justify installing RoboHelp, et al — so I work with the raw HTML in a text editor.

We've recently added a TOC. But when I edit the TOC file, the changes do not appear on the actual pages.

 

For example, if I change...

<page navtitle="ARICLE TITLE" href="../path/article.htm" format="html" processing-role="normal"></page>

...to...

<page navtitle="ALTERNATIVE ARICLE TITLE" href="../path/article.htm" format="html" processing-role="normal"></page>

 

That new navtitle doesn't change on the actual page.

 

I'm hoping someone here can tell me what I'm missing here. Is there another file that I have to edit in tandem with the .toc file? Is there something in the CSS? Or am I just out of luck, and have to ask my teammates to make these edits for me — or download sevreal GB if intrusive software just to make this one edit?

 

Thanks!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    W
    WoutJacobs
    Inspiring
    June 6, 2024

    After experiencing it for myself, I can confirm the issue. The page navtitle in a TOC is ignored even when editing it in the UI.

     

    Instead, the output follows whatever value is in <h1>. The problem seems to occur when h1 does not directly follow body.

     

    In my initial situation, the topic had the following structure:

    <body>

      <h1>blablabla</h1>

    </body>

     

    When editing the page navtitle, the edited value was accepted by the TOC title.

     

    However, I recently added a global div to each body in the 4000 topics of our project (to address yet another bug that I can't be bothered to explain):

    <body>

      <div class="safeguard">

      <h1>blablabla</h1>

     ...

    </div>

    </body>

     

    This disconnect between the body and the h1 seems to break the page navtitle functionality. So I think you should check in your topics if h1 directly follows body and if not, see if making it so will help your issue.

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 6, 2024

    I'm still not clear here. 

     

     <h1>blablabla</h1> is the topic heading, nothing to do with the topic title or TOC.

     

     

    This is the topic heading for the same topic.

     

     

    On creation they all default to the same thing. Thereafter if you change the topic heading, nothing else changes.

     

    The TOC can be set up to be independant or change when the Topic Title (not heading) changes.

    ________________________________________________________

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

     

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    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 6, 2024

    Topic Title is whatever shows in Topic Properties.

     

    In the TOC it defaults to being the same but in the TOC you can change it to whatever you want. Here an asterisk indicates it is no longer the same. To revert to the default you delete the text here and save. The default will then be reapplied.

     

     

    Whether or not this helps the issue is another matter. 🙂

    ________________________________________________________

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

     

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 23, 2024

    Not surprisingly people who support this forum are regular RoboHelp users so we don't need back door methods and wouldn't have looked into them. We make changes using the TOC editor.

     

    One thing you need to understand is that the title of a topic is not necessarily the same as the title in the TOC. They are different fields.

     

    I think you would be better off to make the changes on a colleagues machine. If you change the title there, you will still need to change it in the topic.

    ________________________________________________________

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

     

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
    R
    RobioProAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    May 24, 2024

    Point taken. I just didn't know where else to ask. Not much RoboHelp discussion going on at Reddit or anywhere else. 🙂

     

    The TOC's <page navtitle> being different from the target page's <title> is exactly what we're going for. I want to change only the <page navtitle> and not the topic's <title>. That's exactly what I did, editing the ____.toc file directly. But that edit literally didn't change anything. The TOC still renders with the previous <page navtitle> — which, again, didn't match the topic's <title> even before my edit. That's why I'm stumped.

     

    W
    WoutJacobs
    Inspiring
    May 23, 2024

    That is probably because the navtitle of a page is non-existent, in the sense that the 'navtitle' always defaults to the html title. You cannot specify another title.

    You can only edit the navtitle of a book.

     

    Let's say you have the following TOC:

    This has the following htm:

     

    You can easily change section 1, section 2 by editing their navtitle.

    You can also add a navtitle to Template FAQ, though I'm not sure if that is allowed. Template FAQ is a page (topic) that has been converted to a book (=section)).

     

     

    Now, if you want to change how topics are displayed in the TOC (i.e., pages), you have to edit the actual topic title of the referenced htm file:

     

     

     

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 23, 2024

    @WoutJacobs Whilst the TOC defaults to the topic title on creation, the titles can then be changed so that they are different titles. Perhaps because the author wants something shorter in the TOC.

     

    Whilst the title can be changed in the HTML, normally it would be done via the Properties of the topic.

     

    ________________________________________________________

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

     

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
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