Content Categories cause duplicates of topics?

[NewRiverKinematics]

Hello, I'm writing documentation for a large software package.

There are several different versions of the software being sold--the basic version doesn't have some features that are available in the high-end version.

I decided to create Content Categories for my AirHelp ouput, each representing the different software packages.  That way, users with the basic version of the program will only see topics discussing the functionality in their version, whereas those with the full-featured package can use a different content category and see all of the topics related to their version.

So, for testing, I've got three Content Categories: Entry, Mid-Level, and Premium--I'll call them A, B, and C respectively.

B contains all of A's topics, but a few additional ones.  C contains all of A's topics, and most of B's topics, but a few unique ones.  Also, B has a few topics that aren't in C.

I'm able to implement this successfully using conditional build tags, however, I'm finding that when I build the output, RoboHelp is duplicating topics that are included in each content category.  For example, all of A's topics (about 20 MB worth of content) are being copied for categories B and C.

The duplication is causing the size of my documentation to almost triple (from 25 MB to over 70MB!), because all of the topics in A are being copied into B and C's content categories, and so on.

That seems silly and an awful waste of space! Is that the correct behavior, or am I doing something wrong? I can't force users who auto-update to download three-times the size of the documentation just so they can have content categories!

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hi there

That's the way it works in version 9 if you use the Content Category feature. Each category you define will have duplicate copies of the topics inside. At least that's how I understand it to be.

You might consider submitting a Feature Request to ask for a behavior change.

Cheers... Rick

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[Peter Grainge]

Each category will have all the topics it needs even though they are already in another category. Take a look at the Employee Care sample project.

If that is the duplication to which you refer, then yes that is the way it works.

If you are finding it is including topics that should not be in a category, that is different. Again the sample should help but either way, post back if not clear.

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@petergrainge

[NewRiverKinematics]

Thanks...guess I'll hold off on Content Categories for now and make a feature request.

[Peter Grainge]

Is the likely size of your real project such that it is an issue with disk space so cheap and plentiful? I ask as with RoboHelp 9 being new, I think you are likely to wait some time for a change.

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@petergrainge

[NewRiverKinematics]

So far, the documentation is about 1500 pages, with another 1000 or so expected.

I expect the end size would be about 30-40 MB.  There are 5 versions of the software with different functionality, so that turns a 30-40MB documentation file into somewhere around 150-200MB.  So not only is that additional bandwidth that our customers would use to update their documentation (which we do every few weeks), but also drastically eats up additional space on their disk drive.

Not a showstopper--we'll just go without it.

[Peter Grainge]

The disk size is minor these days but I do understand the download concern.

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@petergrainge