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V
VW670
Participating Frequently
October 22, 2013
Question

How do I get change bars to appear in Robohelp output?

  • October 22, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 1222 views

I am using Frame 11 and Robohelp 10. I have used change bars to mark source content that I have updated (in Frame). When I import and generate output using Robohelp, however, I don't see any indication that that change indicator is coming across anywhere. I need to be able to indicate content changes visually to my audience. Any ideas about how to do that without resorting to changing the content in Robohelp manually or using different para/char styles in Frame?

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1 reply

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 22, 2013

Are looking for this to be visible in your “finished” help? I’d be very surprised if RH could show that in the output. It might be able to display it in the RH topics, but I suspect it would get all filtered out in the output. RH is very much a “end of the production line” tool in the TCS workflow.

V
VW670Author
Participating Frequently
October 23, 2013

Yes, I need something in finished help. I need to be able to provide a visual cue to the audience that specific text has changed in both the finished paper and the online outputs. I did this in the past by applying gray highlighting via character formatting in Framemaker. Unfortunately, removing character-level formatting peppered throughout a 600-page guide in Frame is tedious, to say the least. Therefore, I am looking for another solution. I was hoping that change bars would work. You can cause them to appear in the finished Frame output, and I figured that when imported into Robohelp there would be a marker or something in the HTML that I could work with. However, I don't see anything to that effect in the HTML in Robohelp. I am using the import feature. Maybe there is another way for me to bring over the content that will include that metadata? Or perhaps there is an entirely different approach I should be using to achieve my objective?

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2013

Hmm…Since I’ve never used Track Text Edits or Change Bars, I just consulted my copy of the FM bible (aka Matt Sullivan’s Unstructured FM 11) – it doesn’t say too much about Change Bars except that they can be attached to character tags. It did say that tracking is done with conditional text – maybe you could mess about with the attributes associated with the conditions to have that appear in your RH WebHelp.

The other way is to do what you’ve done before with visual cues in the character tags – removing them shouldn’t be that much of a hassle if you used a script to automate it. I’m assuming you only do this once at the beginning of a cycle of authoring in FM right? I also think that there are plug ins that can do character tag stripping – you may want to check that route out too.

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