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Stefan_rml
Participant
July 28, 2011
Question

Question concerning Auto-Creation of TOC in Robohelp with a linked FM Book

  • July 28, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 669 views

Hello,

I'm using Framemaker 9 and Robohelp 8 on a Win7 machine and I have to create a .chm (HTML Help) File. I should mention that I am using these products for just a couple of weeks now.

I read a lot of threads in the forum but none really seems to contain an answer to my problem. Here it goes:

I've got a single book in Framemaker (structured) with like 25 fm files in it. I'm planning on using folders in the fm book do do a rough structuring with several levels. (Folder in Folder etc). The FM book looks good so far. Now I open RH and a new project. I link the FM book and generate it in RH. The aim of the whole project is to have everything as automated as possible. Trouble starts whe it comes to creating a TOC. I messed around with creating one in FM but because I'm sort of "restricted" due to the structured Framemaker (Only H1 to H3 available) and never came close to what it should look like. So if figured it might be a good idea to create the structure with folders in FM and let RH automatically create the TOC. This is a better solution for me but not the best since RH seems to create a book for every folder (which is exactly what I need) but it also creates a book for every .fm file (which is not really needed). Of course the TOC could be manually altered by drag and drop and some editing but that is not what I would like to achive.

So my question is:

Is it possible to alter the way RH8 automatically creates a TOC from a linked FM9 book (When to create topics and when to create books...) ? Or is there another solution for my problem ?

Hopefully I was able to exactly describe the problem and to provide al necessary information.

Thank you for reading this in any case

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Mark Southee
Mark Southee
Inspiring
July 28, 2011

Hi Stafan, Have you checked the conversion settings? - File > Project Settings > Edit conversion settings for FrameMaker documents

Select your Heading Styles from the Paragraph section and see which styles have Pagination selected. It's possible that all 3 are selected. I have 3 heading styles in a project, and I only have Pagination selected for Heading1 and 2.

Mark

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Stefan_rmlAuthor
Participant
July 28, 2011

Thank you for your reply Mark !

I had all headings included. I thought these settings just apply when I set RH to use a TOC created in FM..

I think I forgot to mention in my first post:

I do not use a TOC in Framemaker. I just have all my .fm files in a book with no TOC at all. I just link it in RH an add a book in the TOC Pod. Then I right-click and click on automatically generate TOC.

That way (I suppose) Rh just generates the TOC structure depending on the structure given by the linked book and its folders. I would just like to sort of... select when a book in the RH TOC is created and when it is just a topic respectively a html file. I now create a book in a book in a book an then den topic. I would need a book in a book and then the topic.

So I would like to tell RH to not create a book everytime when ist processes a .fm file. I should create just a html file.

Sorry it is a rather difficult matter to explain and I am not a native speaker.

Thank you

Stefan

S
Stefan_rmlAuthor
Participant
July 28, 2011

Looking at what you want to achieve, I don't think it's going to be possible without some manual playing around. I would create the TOC in FM (you don't care what it looks like as long as it has the correct indenting - that's what RH looks at when it brings in a FM TOC to create a RH one), then bring in the TOC into RH (via the Conversion Settings) & then manipulate it in RH. That will probably get you closer to your desired TOC look.


I am now at a point where I think that it is indeed not possible what I would like to do. I already gave it a thought and reduced the levels in the TOC to just 3. I think I it would be a good idea to follow Jeff's advice and have a look at the FM TOC again.

Thank you

Stefan

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