Conditionalize TOC in HTML5?

[Scott McC]

I'm creating an HTML5 help system for software that communicates with multiple products. I'd like to reuse topics as much as possible. Each topic is 80% the same with only slightly different text/screen shots. Is there as way to have a single topic listed multiple times in a TOC and control the content in each instance separately?

For example:

TOC

    Product A

        Topic A (only showing content for product A)

        Topic B (only showing content for product A)

    Product B

        Topic A (only showing content for product B)

        Topic B (only showing content for product B)

These are the solutions I've thought might be possible:

• Conditional text allows me to restrict the content shown in the output, but will not allow me to restrict the content based on where it is in the TOC.
• Snippets would allow me to reuse the content in multiple topics, but would be much too complex. I'd end up with multiple snippets for every single topic with multiple screen shots interspersed.
• Merged help system would allow me to conditionalize each output, but I am hoping there is another way.
• Create separate topics for each product?

Is there a simpler way to do this?

[Ioana_St]

I don't think this is possible through conditional tags. The contents of the generated topics are not dynamic, so if you generate with conditional expression A, then the HTML of the topics will be for product A.

In my opinion, the best solution is to use merged projects and generate once with conditional expression A and once with B.

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately my crystal ball is broken and my psychic skills are sub par. So I'm unable to divine what version of RoboHelp you are using.

Assuming it's a pretty recent version, you may want to consider using the Filtering mechanism that is now available. To use that, you tag your content, then when you generate the output, you define the filtering criteria.

Cheers... Rick

[Scott McC]

I'm using RoboHelp 2017. I have already configured filtering in the output. It appears this is the best available option for this hell-p system without redundant information in multiple topics/projects. Now I need to train the users to actually use the filters.

Thanks,

[Captiv8r]

Sincere apologies if I'm stating the obvious here. But when filtering first appeared, this caught me out by surprise.

In the past, I long knew that if I applied a condition to a topic, it would simply automagickally disappear from the TOC when I performed the generation. And if all topics inside a book disappeared, so would the book. So I never went to the extra effort to actually tag things in the TOC as it seemed to take care of itself.

But with filtering, the output doesn't seem intelligent enough to do that if your filter makes all topics inside a book disappear. You will therefore need to tag, generate, and test. Repeatedly. In order to ensure that things work as you want them to!

Cheers... Rick

[Scott McC]

Thanks for the tip!