Robohelp 2022 - Glossary

[JenniR_12]

I have .docx file with terms and definitions (thousands of definitions).  Is there any way I can use this docx file for my glossary in RH?  Can i convert it to a different form and then import somehow?  I see that it's looking for a .glo file when I click on Import.  Any tips or tricks that anyone has to make this fasterr?  Thanks.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

This might help - https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp-discussions/file-layout-of-a-glossary-file-glo/m-p/872997#M3... 

[Amebr]

Regarding the link Jeff posted, it's for a much older version of RH, so you should create a small glossary manually so you can check if the format is still the same.

If your glossary definitions consist of more than one paragraph, I personally wouldn't recommend using the built in glossary as you can only have one paragraph and no formatting such as tables, images, lists or hyperlinks.

What I've done for time immemorial is to have a separate topic called Glossary which I include at the bottom of the table of contents. I use dropdown links so the definition is hidden until someone clicks on the term. You can't use the glossary term converter script with it, but manually hyperlinking has been fine for my cases. Obviously you'd have to determine if that was suitable for your situation.

[JenniR_12]

Thanks Amebr.   My manager was under the impression that there was a way to autogenerate a glossary or an index (although I'm not sure how that would have worked, exactly).  Do you know if there used to be something like that in an older version, perhaps? 

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

IIRC, there was an auto-create index function in Classic versions of RH, but I don't know if that made it into RH2022.

[Peter Grainge]

@Jeff_Coatsworth Mercifully it didn't make it. It over-indexed like crazy.

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

That's what I recall - tried it once & it went nuts indexing virtually every word. Tossed it & went back to my hand-crafted one.

[Amebr]

In classic there was a glossary hotspot wizard built in to the glossary UI - you had to create the glossary then run the wizard to insert links in the topics. 

I believe in New UI there is a script available in insert links in topics, but with fewer configuration options than Classic provided.

[WoutJacobs · Accepted solution]

It's definitely possible with coding, but probably not natively in Robohelp.

As long as you have a structured list of terms and definitions (e.g. a text file 'term\tdefinition\nterm\tdefinition\n...'), you can add them to the glossary file.

If you open Default.glo (xml file), you can see the general structure of the glossary.

For each term + definition, create a tag as follows and add it to the overarching <glossgroup> tag:

<glossentry id="Default_{term}">

  <glossterm>{term}</glossterm>

  <glossdef>{definition}</glossdef>

</glossentry>

[JenniR_12]

Thank you.  I will give this a try and see how it works.  I appreciate all of the feedback.