RH8 - combining legacy topics for conditional tagging

[Guest]

We updated from RH5 to RH8.  In RH5 the writer created three separate projects and chms rather than use condition tags.There are probably 30 unique topics per project.

We want to combine them into one project with three condition tags. It seems like the simplest way is to do it manually:  Open Project A topic A1, then open the html topics B1 & C1, copy the differences into topic A1, and set the diffs as conditional text.

We have many legacy projects. Is there a better way? Perhaps import the unique topics and use an RH8 compare tool of some kind, or use an external editor such as Ultra Compare?

Thank you!

[MergeThis]

You seem to have considered all your choices already. Three things, though:

• RH8 allows you to conditionalize entire topics, as well as sections within topics. You might find it quicker, initially, to simply import all the B and C topics into the A project, and assign B and C conditions to those topics. You could then, once this done, perform selective compare/combine processes at your leisure.
• All content not assigned to a conditional tag will always appear, no matter the conditional build statement. (The underlying logic for conditions is that of exclusion: I want everything but A, or everything but B and C, etc.)
• When conditionalizing tables, you might not get everything if you select in Design mode. Select <table>All of the Table</table> in HTML mode, instead.

Good luck,

Leon

[Guest]

Thanks, Leon!