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Inspiring
June 9, 2015
Question

Glossary Restyling Script creating htm files for each glossary term instance

  • June 9, 2015
  • 1 reply
  • 399 views


We're using Robohelp HTML 11 and Robohelp's Glossary functionality is severely limited. We need our glossary hotspots to be pop-ups, so we use the Output Generator with Glossary Restyling Script, but when we use the pop-up option, it creates an additional html file for each instance of a glossary term instead of mapping all references to a single file for a glossary term. Why does it do this? And is there a way to fix it? The tooltip option does not do this, but it isn't smart enough to keep the pop-ups from going off screen. The additional 10,000 to 11,000 files that this creates is a problem for us, as each file has to be installed individually with our software.

While we're on the subject, is there a way to tell Robohelp to unmark Glossary hotspots? Or to avoid certain styles like headings or special text where we do not want to have glossary hotspots? We had to have someone write a script to fix these issues, but it seems like this should be a standard function.

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1 reply

Captiv8r
Brainiac
June 12, 2015

Hi there

Unfortunately, the script is simply building upon the built in RoboHelp functionality for popups. If you manually add a Text Only popup, you are going to end up with additional HTML files. One for each popup.

The only real alternative here would be to create a single HTML page with all your glossary terms and definitions, then insert bookmarks at each term and manually create a popup link from each instance to its matching term. Painstaking to be sure, but it's the only way around it that I'm aware of.

Feel free to suggest an enhancement request to see things behave differently in a future release. Click the link below and complete the form to request it.

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

CN13579Author
Inspiring
June 12, 2015

Thanks for the response. I figured as much but was hoping there was some way around it. We used to have a glossary page with hand-marked terms like you described, but our Online Help is over 1000 topics. It's just not manageable. One of the devs here just created a program that remaps all of the glossary htm files in the WebHelp to global glossary files, so we created a fix that cuts down our file count by around 10,000 files, but it would be nice to not have to do that.

Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
June 15, 2015

You can modify the script to not create popups in this way but show custom popups or hover text instead. I created something similar for a customer. Let me know if you are interested in exploring the options for this.

For unmarking, a script would be the way I would do it.