All topics are not being generated in the Printed Documentation

[ehelp7]

I have a Web Help Pro project with no build tags/conditional tags. Prior to creating the TOC I have made sure to update the TOC.
When I am reviewign the the generated Printed Documentation I am noticing whole sections of books and topics are missing.

During Printed Doc generation the following steps are being taken:
1.In the first dialog box: Generate WodDoc is checked by default, Printed Doc name is left to the default name, path is left to the default path, Generate a single document is checked, Images are linked to the doc, none for conditional build tags, and start each topic on separate page is checked.

2. In the second dialog box: Show all topic is checked and maintain HTML heading level unchecked.

3. In the third dialog box, Organize the sections...": Show all topics is unchecked by default

4. In the second dialog box: In the MS Word Template - None Use the Project's CSS Styles is selected by default.

Hope there is enough info above for someone to assist me. Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

You updated the TOC but that does not automatically update the TOC you see in the print wizard. If you go into the print layout, you will see some books with a turquoise colouring to indicate they are in the print layout and some will be white to indicate they are not.

If you want a complete duplicate of the TOC, you simply click the left pointing arrow to clear what is there and then click the right pointing arrow to insert the whole TOC.

Show All is simply a means of seeing topics the build expression has excluded. You are not using one. In any case, they still would not print. It is simply an aid to what could have been included but for the expression.

There's a whole topic on printed documentation on my site.

Post back to let us know if that fixed it.

[ehelp7]

Thank you for your reply post. Unfortunately the problem did not fix. Below are the error messages I get when printed documentation is being generated:

Warning: The Word Document became corrupt when attempting to append a malformed topic: 'Sample_Topic_Name.htm'
Failed to process 'Sample_Topic_Name2.htm'...
Fatal Error: Word Document got corrupt. Abort building 'Sample Topics'.

I have replaced teh name of the topics and topic folder above with Sample Topic wording. However, the error messages are the same as above.

Deleting and recreating the topic does not appear to solve the problem also.

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

OK, that's the information needed.

Go to this topic and use the browser search for Malformed.

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/printing/print_issues.htm

There are a number of causes explained there.

[CastleIsland Photo]

I have a similar problem. I have a project with several topics that fail to show in the printed documentation. They are quite definitely part of the TOC for the Printed Docs. I get no error messages but the topics are not in the end product file.

[Peter Grainge]

There's a whole load of reasons this can happen.

As well as the Print Issues topic, look in the Printed Documentation topic on my site. Something there should ring a bell.

Also try creating another print layout.

Have you looked in View | Output View? There's often a clue there that can be missed.

Try the things on my site and then post back with more information as to what you have tried.

[CastleIsland Photo]

Okay, this is definitely strange. If I remove the Build Expression, the missing topics do print. However, these topics do not have a topic-level build tags. They do have content-level build tags. The excluded text contains an expanding hotspot.

I've also noticed that sometimes it seems that the missing text involves topics where two different Content-level tags are right next to each other.

[Peter Grainge]

Have you checked in the meta tags of the topic that there is no condition?

Not sure what is causing this. I'm going to be away on a mixture of holiday and attending a conference.

if you cannot resolve this, email me offline and I'll get round to it but it will be at least ten days or so.

[CastleIsland Photo]

Nothing in the Meta Tags either. Someone else suggested a conflict involving the Style Sheet but using the default style mapper sheet didn't help. I'll keep banging on it. I'm trying to make the case for not needed printed docs for this product so maybe I can talk my way out of this problem, temporarily.

[HKabaker]

In the dialog screen, "Organize your topics in the chapter layout," on the right-hand side, are all the book icons white?

If the icon is grayed out, that means even though the topic appears in the list, it will not appear in the printed output. Normally, this should correspond to the Conditional Build Expression you specified in the first setup screen.

Harvey

[CastleIsland Photo]

All of them are white.

[HKabaker]

You said:

I've also noticed that sometimes it seems that the missing text involves topics where two different Content-level tags are right next to each other.


Possibly the conditional codes are scrambled. I've seen RH do with when you apply, unapply, apply a different one, edit, whatever. If it coincides with a style or formatting change, it gets more complex because the x-condition tag gets stuffed into the style string.

In the source code, it should look something like the example below. If you end up with nested < span > </span > strings, I'm not sure RH can handle it.

A long shot, maybe.

H

[Guest]

Hi,

I have had this problem with topics not coming through to my printed documentation despite me recreating the TOC, etc. However, thanks to Peter's web site I have solved my problem - topics that had long filenames were the culprits - shorten the names and they appear in my documentation (as if by magic!). Why this is the case is beyond me - I don't care to be honest - if it works it is good enough for me. Hope this also helps others that are frustrated with missing topics...and thanks again Peter!

Marian

[Peter Grainge]

Glad to have helped Marian.

[HKabaker]

Another opportunity for me to harp on one of my favorite subjects: Always use economy in naming files. Not a single character longer than necessary to establish a unique identity. And you don't have to resort to inscrutible coding like

T1Cl35intro.htm.

This isn't the only place where long file names can get you into trouble.

Harvey