Overlapping tags in robohelp 2019

[balasubramanyar28237554]

I am trying to generate outputs print outputs and unable to get the content which has overlapping tags. I had used Robohelp long back, and might have forgotten some things.

I have used the following tags:

- Admin

- SM

- Op

Some of the features in our application can be used by Admin and SM or SM and Op. If the content has overlapping tags, the print output does not display the content when I use expressions as 'exclude Admin and Include SM' or 'Include SM and Exclude OP'.

Is there way we can do it in Robhelp 2019 release?

[Peter Grainge]

Are you saying this worked before? I would be surprised if that did work because in part of the expression where the tags overlap you are telling RoboHelp not to include something and then telling it to include it. A bit confusing.

Generally expressions work best when you just use exclude. The rest gets included. Perhaps rethink the content and apply tags so that one or the other is excluded.

[Peter Grainge]

It looks like SM is always included so no need to tag it. Then tag content Admin or Op. When generating for SM and Op, the expression would be Not Admin.

[balasubramanyar28237554]

Hi Peter,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I was not sure if it worked before, but your comments confirm that it didn't.

I am using the same content for generating Responsive HTML with dynamic filtering where I am providing the filtering options as Admin, SM, and Op. If I do not tag content with SM, then I think the content won't appear when SM is selected in the responsive HTML output.

Do you think I should create separate projects for HTML and printed outputs? Does single sourcing won't help here?

[balasubramanyar28237554]

The other workaround is, after tagging content as Admin or Op, and Print, I can repeat the same content in the same topic and tag it with Admin, Op, SM, and Online. So that it is used only for online output and also appears as dynamic filters. I am not at my office today to try this.

[Erwin.Timmerman]

With overlapping tags, the formulas become a bit tricky, but it can be done. When I was using RH9 I once made an overview of complex conditions (see below), most of it will probably still apply today. It probably works fine with compiled output.

However, I tried recently using conditions for dynamic selection (such as product1, product2, sysadmin, enduser) but that opens a whole can of worms when you try to apply dynamic conditions. The search finds topics that if you click on them say "cannot show this topic with the selected conditions" (well, then don't find them either, yeah?) and all other kinds of weird stuff happening. Especially when entire topics are excluded dynamically, the TOC still shows them. So you need to exclude the topics as topics, but in the TOC too. Just too much hassle. So I have more or less given up on dynamic conditions. Nice feature in theory, but not usable in practice. At least not IME. YMMV.

Anyway, the examples of complex conditions use A, B, C and D as product conditions, Print and Online as output conditions, and Always_Exclude as author condition, which means these included text that was meant as comment for the author only (such as "check if this statement is correct").

[Peter Grainge]

DCF wasn't mentioned at the outset but as Erwin has said, it adds a whole differerent level of complexity.

I am currently working with Adobe to produce something to explain the ins and outs of DCF. To produce a TOC that is filtered it is often necessary to apply the tags to the TOC as well. Why will be covered when the article is complete. I hope that will be very soon.

I don't think it should be necessary to create a duplicate project. It's more about getting the tagging right.

[Erwin.Timmerman]

I can see there would be problems that originate more in HTML or javascript than in RH, but Adobe decided to add this feature themselves 😉

The problem I have with applying the same tags to both the topics as the TOC is that it is almost impossible, or at leas very cumbersome, to keep them in sync. Does RH have some kind of "apply all topic tags to currently loaded TOC", where it would add and take away TOC tags purely depending on the topic tags of the topics it points at? That would really help. Otherwise I can't really see me using this, too much room for error/troubleshooting needed.

[Peter Grainge]

Erwin - I do get your point and I think I am right in saying that initially (RoboHelp 2015) the TOC did work in the way you want. The issue was that for other users it didn't and for various reasons they couldn't change the tagging. The only solution was to require TOC tagging to be in sync with the tags used in topics for DCF. 

A specific DCF TOC is the answer at the moment but maybe a feature request would be for RoboHelp to create a TOC that looks at how the tags are applied to or in topics AND that are used in the DCF configuration and ignores those tags not in DCF. I believe that is how it needs to work but I am still testing.

[Amebr]

If you're doing some work with Adobe on DCF, one problem I had was if you were on a topic, then selected filters, the page would go blank without a message, and there was no way to display one.

From memory, the message Erwin mentioned displayed when you clicked on a search result or toc entry, just not for the currently viewed topic, if it was excluded by your filters. 

I'm not sure if it's still the case that you get an entirely blank page in the scenario I mention, but if it does, it would be good to get that fixed. If the message was editable, that would be even better. 

(Apologies, I haven't tested it in RH2019 yet. Time. Resources. 🙂  )

[balasubramanyar28237554]

Meanwhile, I am having trouble in generating word output from 2019.0.11 update. I am in touch with the Adobe team. Direct me to any links, if available. I am getting the error 'failed to generate word output'. I removed all conditional tags, bookmarks, expandable text, and related topics, with no success. I now just have the TOC and the topics linked to a css.

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge.

[Peter Grainge]

Are you able to generate a printed output from the supplied RoboHelp Reimagined sample project?