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Hi,
I currently use Webhelp (RH11) and have 3 content categories, using conditional tags. We are considering moving to a responsive layout. It seems that content categories are available with this layout.
I'm sure I'm not the only one - has anyone come up with a work-around to this? is it possible to create links to the other content categories (i.e., in my case, generate 4 different outputs, 1 so the user can choose the content, and then 3 of the original webhelp categories) and then "launch" that particular doc?
Filters can also point to Build Expressions. But you might note that Adobe is presently researching a bug in their logic related to this.
Last I heard from them they believe it's a bug, but they haven't yet come back to fully confirm.
At this point all you can do is experiment!
Cheers... Rick
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Actually, if you are headed to Responsive, you might want to investigate using the new Filters options. I'm not 100% sure, but I think these may be the "suggested replacement" for the older Content Categories feature.
Cheers... Rick
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yes, that sounds like that might do the trick, but I'm assuming because you said "new" that this feature is not available in RH11 and I couldn't find anything in 11 related to that, so I'll have to ck the upgrade...
thank you!
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Indeed, I believe the filtering came about in RoboHelp 2015 Release. And it continues in RoboHelp 2017 Release.
Quite a powerful feature. I'm using it in a current pet project I'm working on.
Cheers... Rick
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Dynamic User Centric Content (DUCC - AKA Content Categories) remains in WebHelp in later versions of RoboHelp but is not available in Responsive Layouts.
Dynamic Content Filtering is a Responsive Layout only option with more flexibility. You can set up options as radio buttons with each limiting what the user gets to what you had set up using DUCC. However, you can also set up check boxes to give the user greater flexibility as to what they see.
In your case, your existing expressions used with radio buttons only should work to give you the same options as before.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information
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Thank you.
I've created Filters to correspond with my existing conditional tags. Is there a way to allow more than one conditional tag per filter? I'm not talking about sub-categories or sub-filters. I have a tangled web of conditional tags that I'm now trying to simplify, for example,
Tag1 = content A
Tag 2 = content B
Tag 3 = contentAandB
Tag 4 = content C
Tag 3 represents information that is shared between both, but excluded from content C.
So for the filters I would like:
Filter A = content A + contentAandB
Filter B = content B + contentAandB
Filter C = content C
This doesn't seem possible. So, I went back and removed the "contentAandB" tags everywhere and replaced them with 2 tags, "content A, content B" at the topic level. The filter doesn't like this because when I switch filters, the files with 2 tags (A and B) do not display in the correct TOC order....it's like they keep the same TOC level as the previous filter, which is way out of whack with what displays. So, that's not going to work.
The other thing that I tried is to put the "contentAandB" information in a snippet and then create 2 topics...one which would appear in Filter A and one would appear in Filter B. While this is a headache, in theory I thought this would solve the problem but now its causing problems with my TOC, i.e., a book can only link to one topic, and having 2 identical books won't work because they will both display when no filter is selected. (With webhelp, I had 3 TOCs....so I wasn't thinking of the 1 TOC requirement here and filters...) ech.
RH 2017 13.0.257, Responsive HTML5
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Filters can also point to Build Expressions. But you might note that Adobe is presently researching a bug in their logic related to this.
Last I heard from them they believe it's a bug, but they haven't yet come back to fully confirm.
At this point all you can do is experiment!
Cheers... Rick
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HI,
Build Expressions are what I need, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
I'm having the same issue with the TOC displaying incorrectly when I switch between Filters, even when I use Build Expressions. It doesn't happen right away, just after a few clicks and if a book is selected/open when I switch.
How can I find out if this issue is the same suspected bug you mentioned?
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Hello again
Personally, I've long avoided tagging elements in the TOC as I always saw unpredictable results in the output.
Having said that, I do note that when we use the new Filters, it does become necessary to actually tag the TOC elements. With regular topic tagging and build expressions prior to filters, if all topics inside a book were removed, the book would also be removed. But when using Filters, it seems (to me, anyway) that if the filter causes all topics inside a book to be hidden, it should also hide that particular book. And to me, that sounds like a bug.
But that is actually separate from what I was referring to earlier. What I was referring to earlier was that according to Adobe, the filtering logic works this way:
If you have a group in the filters, an AND should be applied to the conditions if you are allowing multiple selections. So that would seem to suggest that if you have individual build expressions that are very simple. Perhaps all each expression says is "NOT Tag1", and you allow multiple selections, the first expression works fine when enabled. Anything on the page tagged with Tag1 performs a disappearing act. But if you enable a second expression one would expect to see this condition: "NOT Tag1" AND "NOT Tag2" where anything tagged with Tag 1 or Tag 2 would simply disappear. But what actually happens is that what was hidden before re-appears and all content is again visible.
At the moment, it would appear the best option is to simply avoid the multiple option in the filtering setup. Either that, or just allow the filters to act on individual tags.
The whole filtering concept is certainly susceptible to the law of unintended consequences! You can easily create conditions that cause all information to simply vanish from a topic! I know, I've done it many times myself!
Cheers... Rick