Subkeywords and other index issues after RH2020 upgrade

1. Try a semi-colon (;) not a colon (:).  🙂

2. I think Jeff is referring to the index cross reference functionality. I believe in chm (and webhelp, from memory), that function jumped you to the cross referenced keyword (Merchant Category Code in your example). However, in Frameless all the topics from the cross referenced item are added to the other keyword. So everything under Merchant Category Code would appear under MCC as well.

(I think Responsive might still have the old functionality where if the keyword or subkeyword only had one topic associated, it would jump straight to the topic without displaying the file name. )

You can request features and report issues here: https://tracker.adobe.com/
Post the item number in the discussion so people can easily vote if they want the same functionality.

Regarding my previous question, I think I understand. You would create a keyword (MCC) and not associate it with a topic. I don't know how this appeared in your output because mine are only included in output if there is a topic associated, or if I cross referenced it to another keyword. I feel like maybe there is a step missing in my understanding.

Yes, I suppose that would be an option (associating "MCC" with the same topic as "Merchant Category Codes" but forgoing the subkeywords). I did not develop the original index, so maybe if I ever have time to address the issues, I can do it a bit differently. Thanks for the discussion!

In the original index, there are two situations where a comma was used in an index entry. 

1) With an entry like "Transactions, viewing", there are no subkeywords but the word "viewing" is added for clarity. (I'm winging it here with examples.) In the original index, this entry appeared on a single line and there was a topic associated with it. After the upgrade, I now have two entries, "Transactions" and "viewing". If I use the colon, "viewing" becomes a subkeyword (the only one under "Transactions"), so the entry now takes up two lines. I can live with this, but it does force the user to do some extra clicking.

2) With an entry like "MCC, see Merchant Category Codes", the subkeywords are all underneath "Merchant Category Codes". If a user looks up the acronym "MCC", I want to direct them to the full term instead. In the original index, there was no topic associated with "MCC". I suppose I could arbitrarily pick some topic where the acronym is used, but that's not what I want. (In a printed book, this type of "see" entry would appear without a page number.)

I'm not sure I have time to clean up the index before my deadline, so maybe I'll just skip it and see if we get any complaints. It's not a feature you see much in online help these days.

I don't understand what you mean by this "I don't want to associate the subkeyword with a topic. So this may work in some situations but not all." Can you explain more? Perhaps your full workflow for creating these in Classic will help.

Thanks for your quick reply.

1) I tried your suggestion of using a semicolon. That created a subkeyword with no associated topic, so when I generated the index, that entry did not appear. But if my entry is of the "MCC, see Merchant Category Code" variety, I don't want to associate the subkeyword with a topic. So this may work in some situations but not all.

2) I definitely don't like the way the Frameless index works. (Apparently I can't enter a request in the feature tracker using my corporate account.) The index output seems very buggy to me, but maybe that's just because I haven't cleaned it up from the merge. I may use this to bolster my argument that we can do without an index entirely! 

1. You could try using a semi-colon instead. It looks like comma is now a quick way to specify multiple keywords (which makes some sense, as they are now stored as a comma-separated list in the topic head tag, so it would be harder to tell what is a plain text comma and what is a keyword separator.).

2. Yep, that's just how Frameless works. And you can't give a nice display name to the bookmark entry like you can in Classic - you just have to live with the filename plus bookmark text (e.g. mytopic.htm#mybookmark). HTML5 output still seems to work the old way (if the subkeyword links to only a single entry, clicking the subkeyword takes you straight to the topic). If you want that in Frameless you'd need to submit a feature request. You can request features and report issues here: https://tracker.adobe.com/

Post the item number in the discussion so people can easily vote if they want the same functionality.

Regarding the separate indexes, I think the idea is it's generally controlled by what topics you include in the output (via the ToC). You can also use condition codes on the index keywords, I assume for a bit more control if you use different terms between the outputs (e.g. you produce output for different clients and one calls something a widget, and the other calls the same thing a doodad.)