Importing table rows as topics in Robohelp

[Guest]

For my company's move to single-sourcery, we purchased FrameMaker 8.0 and
decided to use it with our current Robohelp x5 software. (We purchased FM
prior to the release of the Tech Comm Suite --unfortuante timing.)

FM seems to work with conditional tags for our print manual and our online
help, but we would like to use a third conditional tag for field level help.
Importing the FM source doc into Robohelp with the 'Online' tags works fine,
but importing with the 'Field' tag has some side effects --one of which is the
current thorn in our side.

In the FM source doc, modeled most closely on the existing print manual, all
our fields are listed in tables --a table for each dialog box. This works
nicely in print guides as well as for online task topics. Since the field
name and field definition as listed in the table are the same as the topic
we would use for F1 (or context-sensitive) field help, we wanted to tag the
content in these tables and import them into Robohelp when creating field
help topics. We don't want to maintain a separate doc for field help since
that would defeat the main advantage and definition of single-sourcery.

While we are able to import each row in the table as a topic (setting new
topics to begin with the style of the field name used in the table),
Robohelp still reads the table or table-cell formatting from which the text
is coming, and places the text in a textbox in the topic. Is there a way to
import our tables so that we get each row of the table to be a separate
topic without Robohelp placing the topic text in a textbox?

Thanks!
Virginia

[JainVivek]

You may want to use conditional text in FrameMaker to create two specific formats - one for Print and another for Online.

[Guest]

Thanks, Jain. We do currently use tags.

FM seems to work with conditional tags for our print manual and our online
help, but we would like to use a third conditional tag for field level help.
Importing the FM source doc into Robohelp with the 'Online' tags works fine,
but importing with the 'Field' tag has some side effects --one of which is the
current thorn in our side.

[JainVivek]

You are trying to map tables to text during the import process for Field level help, a functionality which does not exist out of the box.

A possible workaround (not the ideal solution) is to duplicate the content in FrameMaker (again, not the best thing) - one with tables and one without tables - just as plain text. And, use the plain text version in Online Help.

Another alternative is to create a separate FM document for each field level help, import these documents by reference (as text insets)in FrameMaker, duplicate the content with and without tables. Only advantage is that you are using text insets, hence editing the source changes the content in both places. Use conditional text to filter.

[Guest]

Just to clarify, will each table ROW or each table CELL have to be in a separate Frame file?

Seems to me from my cursory exploration of this option that I will have to keep the field name in one FM file and then the field desription in a second FM file in order for the text insets to come over in the table.

Would it be best to go with this solution and keep a great filing system to keep name file and description file together in a folder and such, or is it best to redesign the table to have merged cells for the rows or a single column --something to have the text inset include both the field name and field description and hence be maintained in one file.

Aargh.

Virginia