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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

If your "changed" content is tagged with a character style and you need to "remove" the visual appearance, all you need to do is re-define the tag style to be "AsIs" for all attributes. Very simple and fast. In fact, you can track mulitple revisions this way and chose to display whichever revisions you want.


@Arnis – so the workflow would be something like – bring up the doc, set the character tag to Asis, save the doc (now all the character specific formatting is gone back to normal); reopen the doc and redefine the character tag to be whatever shade again, make your edits and apply it? Wouldn’t all the old edited text still have the character tag attached? You’d need to create a new “edited” character tag each time to go forward – you couldn’t recycle your previous one?

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