Heading level hierarchy errors when topics are in TOC more than once

[AnnFreeman]

I have discovered that the hierarchy in the Heading levels in the Printed Documentation will differ from than in my online help table of contents hierarchy, and that the problem is due to topics that are intentionally in the TOC more than once.

For example, in chapter 5 of a particular help system the hierarchy should be:

Heading 1 < Chapter 5 title from top-level book>
Heading 2 <title of second level book>
Heading 3 <title of topic that appears under second-level book>*

What I actually get is:
Heading 1 < Chapter title from top-level book>
Heading 2 <title of second level book>
Heading 4 <title of topic that appears under second-level book>*

* This same topic appeared in an earlier chapter. In that chapter it was really at a Heading 4 level.

Due to company styles, etc. we use a numbering system at the headings and in the TOC, so instead of

5
5.1
5.1.1

I erroneously get

5
5.1
5.1.1.1

This type of hierarchy issue appears multiple times in this particular document (which I inherited by the way.)

Other than restructuring the document to not reuse topics in different places in the TOC, is there a solution or a workaround for this problem?

What I am doing so far, is generating the Print Documentation one chapter at a time. As long as a topic is not reused with the same chapter, my hierarchy of heading levels is maintained; otherwise, it is not. Then I can put the chapters back together after fixing the few places that still have heading level problems. This however, will be quite cumbersome as this document is translated into nine other languages.

I am using RoboHelp X5 for Word / Word 2003 for the source and most of the translations; RoboHelp Asian Edition, Simplified Chinese / Word 2003 for the Chinese translation. The heading level hierarchy error occurs in both versions.

[MergeThis]

You'd need to test for the numbering issue, but adding the same topic to multiple places in the TOC creates synchronization problems (the topic always synchs to the first instance from the top. The fix we use for this might help in your case.

Use a blank topic with a redirect meta tag. That is, create a topic (call it MyOriginalHeading_redirect.htm) with the same title as the original and strip everything in WYSIWYG view. Then add the meta tag shown below. Like I said, I'm not sure if this will fix your number problem, but it's a simple thing to try.


Good luck,
Leon

[AnnFreeman]

Unfortunately this is an old RoboHelp for Word help system (.doc/.rtf/.cnt files), so I can't use .htm topic files or meta tags. That's a great idea, though, in case I inherit any RoboHTML projects in the future with the topic-reuse issue! Thanks.

[AnnFreeman]

Also, the problem is even worse for RoboHelp X3 Asian Edition, Simplified Chinese: Not only is the TOC hierarchy not preserved, but after the first occurrence of a topic, all subsequent reuses are omitted in the print documentation!

[Peter Grainge]

Have you ticked the Maintain Heading Levels option.

[AnnFreeman]

I don't want to maintain the heading levels - the online help topics are all Heading 1's because they serve as stand-alone online help topic titles. If I do select the Maintain Heading Levels, I get each topic at a Heading 1 level in the print doc which is not what I want either. (I didn't check about the topic-omission problem when I did this as I hadn't discovered it yet.)

What I'm doing at present is building the print doc in pieces. RH Asian X3 doesn't allow me to pick and choose books and topics from the TOC like RH X5 does, so I edit the TOC in RH and remove the books or parts of books where there is reuse, and put book levels in to preserve the hierarchy I need. I repeat multiple times selecting different sections of the "full TOC" each time. Then I'll put it back together in MS Word. It's time-consuming, and somewhat risky (because I can't read Chinese - I'm just going on relative positions and appearances), but it's my only solution at the moment.

For the next release, I hope to eliminate the reuse issue that I inherited from the past authors.

[AnnFreeman]

>> AF: I've commented in sections...

Without Maintain Heading Levels, RH will apply heading levels to the books and then the topic levels will get bumped down. So a top level book will be Heading 1 and the Headings in the topic will get bumped down to 2, 3 and 4 etc. If then you have another book one level down so that it gets Heading 2 applied, the same topic but under the level two book would then get 3, 4 and 5 applied.

That is not the original problem but hopefully we are agreed that is how things work on that.

>> Yes - that is the expected behavior. When it didn't happen as expected, that's what led me to the discovery of the cause of the problem (topic reuse).

Your problem was that firstly Heading 3 got bumped to Heading 4 if the same topic was inserted into the TOC twice. I assume it was OK in the first instance, or is it that when you add it twice it goes wrong everywhere?

>> Your assumption is correct. First occurrence is correct. Second, third, and fourth (yes - there is one topic that is used 4 times! ) are not correct based on TOC hierarchy.

On the numbering, nothing surprises me. If you look at my site you will see that for RH HTML, i gave up on getting it right. I have had many queries on this and more than a few people have indicated they will work on the problem and get it working. I'm still waiting. There are many posts about outline numbering problems. Has anyone got it working satisfactorily?

>> I don't really have numbering problems. The numbering is following the RoboHelp-generated hierarchy and the .dot template that I apply. It's just that the RH-generated hierarchy and its heading levels don't correspond to the "real" hierarchy because of the reuse issue.

I have seen various Word gurus maintain that numbering has not worked entirely satisfactorily since Word 2! Also enough posts to convince me this is a Word issue, not a RH issue.

If you want to create a new project and knock something up that demonstrates this problem, by all means zip it up and send it. I'll assume it will be a small project and zip to less than 5mb. If more, contact me first.

>> Unless you have RoboHelp X3 Asian Edition, Simplified Chinese, there is really no need. I plan to either avoid the reuse issue in the source, or build the print doc in sections which is easy enough in RoboHelp X5 for the non-Chinese languages. It is in the older Asian edition where the problems are compounded by the omitted reuse topics. If you do have RoboHelp X3 Asian Edition, Simplified Chinese and want to experiment, I can send you a cut-down version of the project. Don't feel obligated though; unless you can read Chinese (I can't) it is very tedious to work with.

[Peter Grainge]

Without Maintain Heading Levels, RH will apply heading levels to the books and then the topic levels will get bumped down. So a top level book will be Heading 1 and the Headings in the topic will get bumped down to 2, 3 and 4 etc. If then you have another book one level down so that it gets Heading 2 applied, the same topic but under the level two book would then get 3, 4 and 5 applied.

That is not the original problem but hopefully we are agreed that is how things work on that.

Your problem was that firstly Heading 3 got bumped to Heading 4 if the same topic was inserted into the TOC twice. I assume it was OK in the first instance, or is it that when you add it twice it goes wrong everywhere?

On the numbering, nothing surprises me. If you look at my site you will see that for RH HTML, i gave up on getting it right. I have had many queries on this and more than a few people have indicated they will work on the problem and get it working. I'm still waiting. There are many posts about outline numbering problems. Has anyone got it working satisfactorily?

I have seen various Word gurus maintain that numbering has not worked entirely satisfactorily since Word 2! Also enough posts to convince me this is a Word issue, not a RH issue.

If you want to create a new project and knock something up that demonstrates this problem, by all means zip it up and send it. I'll assume it will be a small project and zip to less than 5mb. If more, contact me first.

[Peter Grainge]

No I don't have those versions. The nearest I get to Chinese is the local takeaway!

If you are in a position to beta test the next version of RoboHelp there are a lot of changes there. Anything you find at this stage will be looked at more quickly than issues found later. Obviously not wise to do that on a production PC though.

[AnnFreeman]

I'm sorry I won't be able to commit to that. My company is slowly (or not-so-slowly) replacing our RoboHelp projects with a company-content management / authoring environment / production tool. So, I probably couldn't legitimately invest time in new RoboHelp releases. (It's too bad - there's a lot that I prefer in RoboHelp vs. our new system.)