Calling a webhelp with different TOCs - or other solution for multiple versions

Report · Sep 14, 2009

Hello all,

several help version are required, but due to space limitations on the server it is not possible to produce a separate output (using condition tags) for each version. Most of the content is common to all versions. One approach would be to use a common help system and to display it via different webhelp start files, using different TOCs. Do you see a chance for this? It is no problem if the search function shows topics from other versions, but the TOC should be unique.

In the old CHM days I would have used mudularized subprojects merged in different masters. But this does not seem possible in Webhelp because all subprojects would have to be copied multiple times in the master project's "merged projects"- subfolders.

Any ideas are welcome.

Report · Sep 14, 2009

Hi Robert.

The problem you'll have with this approach is there are a variety of output files that are referenced by the start page. It may be possible to manually amend the .HHC file in the output to meet your requirements (obviously making sure you make a backup first) but leave everything else intact but you'd have to amend this for each output if only one version is really the only option.

Read the RoboColum(n).

Report · Sep 14, 2009

I tried the following now: I created a structure, in which the master projects and a common folder "mergedProjects" lie in the same directory. The subfolder "mergedProjects contains the sub projects. Using the multifile find & replace, I changed all paths in the master projects that pointed to the original "mergedProjects" folders to point to the new location now. It works!

This allows the master projects to share the same common content without duplicating it. Of course,as you write, the search & replace has to be done each time I publish a master project.