Pulling keywords from Index and putting them at bottom of topics

Question

I have a variable in my topic template that displays the last modified date of the topic like this:

Last modified: July 23, 2010I don't recall where I got it from, but I'm sure it was in this forum. I'm wondering if whoever wrote that knows how to create a similar variable that would grab the index keywords from the topic (e.g., , , etc.) and paste them at the bottom of the topic like this: "Keywords: System Requirements, Exchange Server 2007" (An example of something similar is in our knowledgebase articles: http://kb.globalscape.com/KnowledgebaseArticle10369.aspx, but they use the term "Tags." That's "canned" software, so I don't know how they did it, except that I have to type the tags one at a time in a form that populates the bottom of the article.)WHY? Because I have all the keywords anyone would possibly want to search for (I hope) in various topics (which were entered manually or with Smart Index), but the only words that get results in the search are words that are actually IN the article. The words appear in the Index, as expected, and link to the proper article, as expected, but typing the word in the Search box in WebHelp does not return the article unless the word is displayed in the article. Some people use different words for the same idea, so they might not always search on the word that is in the article. (e.g., .bat, batch file, script, vbs, code, command...) So the simplest solution is to add the list of keywords at the bottom of the topic, but there are 1000s of topics and I'd rather not do that manually. (And no, I don't want to use ZoomSearch or other 3rd-party tools, thereby negating the "single-source" idea.)OH, for those of you who prefer to ask questions rather than answer them: I'm using RoboHelp 7 on Windows XP and generating WebHelp, HTMLHelp, Word docs, and JavaHelp. My computer has all of the latest updates and fixes for all of my software. Everything in the help works absolutely perfect, I just want to know how/if it's possible to create a variable as I describe.Thanks for any and all assistance!Karla

MergeThis · Answer

As a forum member who "prefer to ask questions rather than answer them," have you read the "Index Basics" topic in the RH 8 help? In there, you'll see that Index keywords and Topic keywords are different:Topic keywords appear the same as index file (HHK) keywords, but they are stored within individual HTML topics.Index file keywords are saved in the project index file (HHK) rather than in the code of individual HTML topics.Unless you can find some technical resource in your organization, your assessment of a manual solution is probably accurate. For an automated solution, you would need to run some type of script (before or after runtime?) to pull the Index keyword from the HHK file and place it inside the topic.For example, the Index keyword, the topic title, and the topic file name all appear in the HHK in this manner:

Another question: have you considered cross-references or user-defined variables in the Index? (See the "Add and link index keywords" help topic.) That's another manual solution, but would require less maintenance issues in the future.Good luck,Leon

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