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A
AIR-Chayah
Inspiring
July 27, 2016
Answered

RoboHelp 2015 (12.0.2.384): Search returns topics not been included in the TOC

  • July 27, 2016
  • 3 replies
  • 3053 views

ENVIRONMENT: Windows 7 Enterprise SP1, 8.00 GB RAM, 64-bit OS, Office 2010, Adobe Acrobat X Pro, Acrobat Reader DC 2015.017.20050

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

  • A single RoboHelp HTML project with three outputs. One of the outputs is a "validation reference" that has its own Table of Contents.
  • The Validation Reference Table of Contents contains a subset of the topics in the main Help system. For example, the main Help system TOC contains a folder called "Administration"; that folder is not in the Validation Reference TOC.
  • The Validation Reference is posted to a public web site. Therefore, we've applied the "Non_public_info" tag to content in shared topics that we do not want to appear on the public web site.
  • WebHelp Settings are as follows:
    • Validation Reference TOC
    • No map files, no browse sequences
    • Conditional Build expression: NOT_Non_public_info_AND_NOT_StyleGuidelines_AND_NOT_TRP (We keep our Style Guidelines in the project to make it easy to access during development. TRP content is to be excluded because not released.)
    • Exclude Unreferenced Topics from Output is selected.
    • Search Options. Only "Show Total Number of Search Results" and "Show AND Search Option in Output" are selected.
  • After generating the WebHelp, we remove the folders that we do not want (RoboHelp generates empty folders even though the folders are not in the TOC.)

PROBLEM: A search in the Validation Reference Help brings up topics that we think should not be included because the topics themselves are not in the Validation Reference TOC. For example, The topic "Data Quality Analysis" is in the main Help TOC, but not in the Validation Reference TOC. Therefore, we don't expect the topic to show up at all in the Search Results pane. But it does. When the user clicks the topic, the "Resource cannot be found" message appear.

Nothing shows up from the Style_Guidelines topics because the StyleGuidelines conditional build tag is applied to the entire folder and to the "Style Guidelines" book in the main TOC. (Same applies to the TRP folder.)

QUESTION: Why are topics that are not in the TOC and whose folders are not in the project at all showing up in the WebHelp during a search? Do we need to rewrite the conditional build expression or set up conditions differently. We assumed that not having topics in the TOC, not including the unreferenced topics in the output, and removing the empty folders would be the way to go. All help welcome!

Thanks so much.

Carol Levie

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Amebr

The table of contents does not control what ends up in the output for online outputs. All untagged content, and tagged content that is not excluded by the build expression will be included. The setting  "Exclude unreferenced topics from the output" will further exclude any topics that aren't in the ToC AND aren't linked from any topic that will be included in the output.

In contrast, for print output the table of contents does control what ends up in the output. I think this trips up a lot of people.

If you generate the help and do not delete the unwanted folders, do you still get the error? If not, you know that the topic is being referenced somewhere in the Validation Reference content.

Here's the help from RH11. I can't imagine this would have changed, but you could do a search to double-check for RH2015.

Exclude Unreferenced Topics From Output

Select this option to exclude any topic that exists in the project but is not the default topic in the layout or is not referenced from the selected TOC, index, or browse sequence, or any referenced topic.

note:  RoboHelp displays the unreferenced topics that are excluded from the output in the Output View pod.

3 replies

A
AIR-ChayahAuthor
Inspiring
July 29, 2016

I don't see a way to "Reply to All", and so hope that by replying to my original post, I'm replying to all of you.

  • I did some analysis yesterday. I looked at each topic in the main TOC, noted whether it had a topic-level tag or not, noted whether it was in the Val Ref TOC, checked to see whether it was in the search results and, if so, whether the link was broken. I also then checked to see whether topics that are not in the Val Ref TOC but that appear in the search results contained links to topics in the Val Ref TOC, or to topics with links to topics that are not in the Val Ref TOC but that contain links to topics with links to topics in the Val Ref TOC. Murky and confusing!
  • Based on my initial analysis, I believe that Amebr is mostly correct. The search results do include untagged topics with links to topics in the Val Ref TOC, or with links to topics with links to topics in the Val Ref TOC. However, I don't understand why clicking those links brings up the content, considering that I deleted the output folders containing those topics. RoboHelp must be doing something under the covers to include the conten
  • The untagged topics that generate a resource error when clicked from the search results pane do not appear to be linked with ANY topics in the Val Ref TOC or with any topics that contain links to topics in the Val Ref TOC. Clearly, something in the output is 'remembering' that the Help was generated with untagged topics (there must be a list somewhere) that are no longer there. Hence the error message.
  • One further mystery. There are several topics that are untagged and that are not in the Validation Reference TOC. When I search for those topics or for content those topics, the topics do not appear in the search results pane! I expected to see the topics and to get a resource error.
  • Topics with the Non-public_info tag do not appear in the search results. That works as expected and as described by Amebr.

I haven't tried Peter's approach yet, but thanks for the idea. Since we probably don't want to exclude all the "untagged but linked" content, we may want to simply identify the "untagged and unlinked content" and apply a NotValRef tag to it.

Thanks again for all your helpful comments.

Regards,

Carol Levine

A
Community Expert
AmebrCommunity Expert
Community Expert
August 1, 2016

One thought about why the deleted topics might display.

If you delete them from your C drive then copy/ftp/publish the output folder to your web server, then those original files/olders will still exist on your web server unless you delete them manually.

It's possible that you also deleted some of the "search" files robohelp generates, so the original "search" files might still be on the server and thus be returning old search results.

A
AIR-ChayahAuthor
Inspiring
September 9, 2016

Before generating the output, we delete everything from the output folder.

Thanks for the idea though.

Carol

A
AIR-ChayahAuthor
Inspiring
July 28, 2016

Thanks so much for the speedy replies, which are so appreciated

I'm printing out your replies and plan to do a bit more testing.

--Carol

A
Community Expert
AmebrCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
July 28, 2016

The table of contents does not control what ends up in the output for online outputs. All untagged content, and tagged content that is not excluded by the build expression will be included. The setting  "Exclude unreferenced topics from the output" will further exclude any topics that aren't in the ToC AND aren't linked from any topic that will be included in the output.

In contrast, for print output the table of contents does control what ends up in the output. I think this trips up a lot of people.

If you generate the help and do not delete the unwanted folders, do you still get the error? If not, you know that the topic is being referenced somewhere in the Validation Reference content.

Here's the help from RH11. I can't imagine this would have changed, but you could do a search to double-check for RH2015.

Exclude Unreferenced Topics From Output

Select this option to exclude any topic that exists in the project but is not the default topic in the layout or is not referenced from the selected TOC, index, or browse sequence, or any referenced topic.

note:  RoboHelp displays the unreferenced topics that are excluded from the output in the Output View pod.

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
July 28, 2016

I would have to respectfully disagree with the statement about the TOC not controlling what ends up in output.

I know that many folks over the years have somehow expected this behavior. And I believe that's precisely why we now see the option for excluding unreferenced content.

So by using the unreferenced content option you are, in fact, controlling what is in the output via the TOC.

Cheers... Rick

A
Community Expert
AmebrCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 28, 2016

My turn for respectfully disagreeing.

If the ToC contains only the topics you want AND those topics don't contain any links to topics that is not in the ToC then the "Exclude" option will indeed control the output via the ToC. (The OP has stated they don't use Browse sequences, so I will ignore this scenario. And I can't comment on how the Index might work; I'd have to run some experiments to figure out that interaction.)

So say the project contains Topic1, Topic2 and Topic3. (No conditions are used for the sake of simplicity.)

The table of contents contains Topic1, and the output has "Exclude unreferenced topics from the output" ticked.

If Topic1 does not contain links to Topic2 or Topic3 then the project will indeed be limited by the table of contents.

If Topic1 contains a link to Topic2 however, then even though Topic2 is not in the table of contents it will be included in the project and show up using search.

Now here's the tricky part. If Topic2 contains a link to Topic3, then Topic3 will also be included in the output even though neither Topic2 nor Topic3 appear in the table of contents.

If conditions are used, then things are a bit more complicated. If the topic is excluded by a build expression it will be excluded even if a link exists in an included topic.

So for our example say Topic3 is tagged Print_Only, and the build expression is "NOT Print_Only". Topic2 will still be included because of the link in Topic1, but Topic3 will not be included because of the condition tag, and in fact the link in Topic2 will be removed.

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