Conditional Build Tags not being honored in Table of Contents?

[CN13579]

I just applied the 2015.0.4 update to Robohelp 2015 and I generated my project to test the content filtering... I'm finding that the filtering seems to work fine in topics, but in the Table of Contents it's not working anymore. To be fair, I can't say with certainty that this is an effect of the update, but this was working before in the recent past, and now I find that it is not, so it may or may not be related.

Anyone else have any trouble with this?

I'll give an example to show how mine is failing:

TOC and Topic with tagging:

Here it is in the Responsive HTML5 output with a filter applied:

Three of those TOC items should be filtered out to only show Windows Server 2008 topics.

I found this while trying to test some other new tags and filters, and came back to these that I knew were working before.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Are the tags applied directly to the topics? If so, what happens if you remove the tagging from the TOC?

I find that if I tag topics themselves that I don't need to tag the TOC. The only time I need to tag the TOC is if perhaps all topics inside a Book will be removed as a result of the filter. If that's the case, I tag only the book because if the topics are tagged, they are automatically removed from the TOC.

Cheers... Rick

[CN13579]

Thanks for replying.

Both the TOC and Topics are tagged.

I tried unchecking the TOC checkbox for one and seeing if it worked, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I would still consider it broken even if that was the case because there are cases where you want to be able to filter something in the TOC but keep content available in the topics.

I checked another project that we have that uses some CBTs in the TOC and it also does not work there either. Just as a sanity check, I checked the last generated version that went into a build of our software and it was working fine, so I'm getting pretty confident that it broke in the update.

[Captiv8r]

Hmmm, I'm noticing that the properties are showing that two different tags are applied to this element. Perhaps it's an issue with the way your filtering logic has been set up?

Cheers... Rick

[CN13579]

It was working before. I can demonstrate better with another example. In another project that was generated before the update, I have a filter that takes out information related to the IP Rights feature when selected. When IP Rights info is included, the filter is set as:

And the IP Rights folder is shown in the TOC:

And when IP Rights info is excluded...

It does not display in the TOC:

But now, when I generate the project after the update, I can select the Exclude filter

But it still shows the IP Rights folder:

Nothing has changed in the project that would affect this. The tags are the same and the filters are the same.

[Captiv8r]

Hmmm, so I thought I was all up to date with service releases but the updates are telling me RoboHelp has an update available. I'm applying the update as i type this response and will test once I'm back up and running.

Cheers... Rick

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hello again

Okay, I've downloaded and installed the latest update and sure enough, seems they have introduced a bug along the way that affects the TOC. Where my testing worked fine before, the TOC now remains unaffected.

Please click the link below and file a bug so we can get this on Adobe's radar for a fix.

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

[CN13579]

Ok. Thanks for checking. I submitted a bug report. I guess people vote on what they fix?

Link for people to vote:  4196250

[Captiv8r]

As I understand it, the bug reports do actually "kind of" act as a voting mechanism. Here's how. Adobe does see each and every one submitted. And if they see an uptick in the number of bugs surrounding a specific issue, it gives them a better clue as to how widespread any given issue may be. The problem is, there will likely be many that may encounter an issue but never report it.

I also filed a report on this particular issue.

Cheers... Rick

[gc31]

Hi,

I also have this problem since updating to update 4.

Is it possible to roll back to update 3 to fix this? - or are their any interim fixes / workarounds.

Cheers

[CN13579]

I don't think you can uninstall an update. I'm hoping they push out a fix for this soon because if they don't I'm going to have to uninstall and reinstall Robohelp without the updates.

[gc31]

Looks like I will have to go down the root of uninstalling and re-installing Robohelp to update 3 which is a major pain.

Currently I have an index which I can't turn off and if any conditional filter is applied, all content is then blocked when using the TOC.

These were all fine before I applied service release 4.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You may have an issue with a project that was “upgraded” (in RH’s eyes) from update 3 to update 4.

[CN13579]

If that's true then we are going to have some serious problems if this does not get fixed in the near term.

[Captiv8r]

I called it to Adobe's attention and received back a reply that they are working on a fix. Hopefully we will see it pretty soon.

Cheers... Rick

[gc31]

As Adobe still haven't released a patch to resolve the update 4 issues, uninstalling and re-installing to update 3 does fix the issues and everything works as it did previously. A pain to do though.

I note that the offending Service Release 4 has now been removed from the Robohelp Service Releases page:

Robohelp Service Releases

Hopefully, a new patch is on the way.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

It usually takes a few days before the service release is available through the download site. I just got the patch from RoboHelp, go to Help > Updates. The 12.0.4.1 patch popped up for me.

[gc31]

Hi,

Does the 4.1 update definitely address all the issues that were introduced in update 4?

Thanks

[CN13579]

I just applied the patch and this is still broken for me.

Edit: I rebooted and tweaked the filter settings and it seems to work now. It doesn't always filter the way I would expect it to but I guess it works. Better than before anyways.

[Amebr]

CN13579​ can you go in to more detail about the oddities? I've been thinking of upgrading to RH2015 for the filtering, but if it's whacky...?

[Peter Grainge]

Download the helpfiles from my site. Unless Adobe included those versions

in the latest patch, Employee Care contains important revised instructions.

[CN13579]

I'm definitely still having issues with filtering but they're more broad than just the Table of Contents issue at the moment. I keep running into problems using variables and then tagging the variables to be filtered. Often, something gets confused and nothing displays even though the correct filter is applied. Strangely, I have an instance where something filters correctly in a paragraph, but if I copy and paste it into the next paragraph, the second paragraph does not display correctly while the first paragraph is still fine.

Edit: Part of the problem is that Robohelp sometimes inserts things in the middle of an existing CBT HTML tag set, so if you try to filter for the thing you added by filtering out the outer tag, you see nothing. It would help if Robohelp cleaned up unused tags instead of leaving them to trap future content. If you paste a lot of repeated tagged variables like I do, this can become quite a headache.