Search Conditional Books and Topics

Hey Rick! Yup, also in the Captivate forums too. Jack of all trades, master of none.

I guess our needs are much simpler than most folks. I can't imagine having content in the published help file that isn't referenced in the TOC somewhere. That seems to fly against the principles of good UI design.

We're slogging through the various TOC entries now, trying to figure out which topics go where and what tags we need to apply. And I still say it's te-diculous , so I've submitted a feature request to have the option of having the TOC also control which topics are included in Search. Time will tell if anything comes of it.

Thanks again for everybody's responses, and especially the tip about using Apply instead of OK. It really is much appreciated!

BTW, you made a logical assumption about how conditional tags worked - but before version 6, build tags only applied to topic content (either the whole topic or selected text).

I'm still at the "Gee whiz, I can condition out TOC entries!" stage...;-)

Elisa

That's because what you "conditioned out" was the TOC entry, not the topics themselves. You need to apply topic-level conditional build tags to the topics. The easiest way is to bring up the Topics tab in RoboHelp, highlight the topics you want to change, right-click to open a group Properties window, go to the Advanced tab, and choose the build tags in the Topic-Level list.

HTH,
Elisa

We've got the exact same issue going on here with RoboHelp 6... can anybody shed any light on exactly how I'm supposed to keep the Search function from finding topics that should be excluded according to their Conditional Build tag?

Here's the breakdown, in case it helps:

1. We publish the same help file to two different audiences based on Conditional Build tags... some top-level books in the TOC are generic to both audiences and some are specific to an individual group.

2. We only manage custom books/topics at the top-most book level... we either want to show an entire top-level book or we don't.

3. In the TOC pane in RoboHelp 6, we apply a Conditional Build tag to the top-level book to determine which "version" of the project a book should appear in. This tag then cascades to all sub-books and topics. If a top-level book appears in all versions, it receives no tag.

4. In the project template we use Conditional Build tags to create a customized footer.

5. On some generic topics, we use Conditional Build tags to control the verbiage that is displayed if the page appears in a certain "version" of the project.

6. We do not do any indexing or use a glossary... our users can either browse the TOC or do a search.

7. When publishing, we specify the Conditional Build tag and the TOC displays as expected in the compiled output. It only contains the desired books as specified by the Conditional Build tags.

8. When searching for a term in a book/topic that does NOT appear in the TOC (due to it having the wrong Conditional Build tag), the search nonetheless finds those topics and displays them when clicked in the search results list. This is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and in our case, potentially dangerous as the user has no idea that the content is not appropriate for them.

I assumed that applying the build tag to the top-level book in step 3 is all that needed to be done. When expanding a book in the TOC pane in RoboHelp, each individual sub-book/topic correctly shows that the appropriate tag is applied (both through the highlight color and right-clicking to view the Apply Conditional Build Tag flyout menu).

Is there anything I can do to keep the wrong topics from appearing in the search results when Conditional Build tags are used? Do I need to apply the correct tag individually to each and every topic? Do I need to upgrade to RH7 to fix this egregious bug?

FYI - I tried making my build expression both exclusionary (listing all undesired tags using NOT) and inclusionary using the Advanced button (only listing the desired tag) and both have the same result: inappropriate topics still display when doing a search.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide!

***EDIT***

It gets better... I tried deleting the inappropriate books from the TOC and then publishing using the correct Conditional Build tag. The wrong topics STILL appear in the search, even though their parent books no longer appear in any version of the TOC!

Plain,

I'd guess you applied build tags to the TOC entry and neglected to tag the topics. So the TOC looks the way you want it to look, but you haven't told RH which topics to omit in the search database.

If you select a no-TOC topic from search results, does it display?

The search database is compiled each time you generate WebHelp. I believe RH obeys conditions in your build expression here, as well as for the Index (provided you haven't embedded Index entries in the topics themselves).

If I'm correct about your method, probably the output folder contains the topics you excluded from the TOC.

Harvey

Are you saying that in the compiled output you are seeing what you'd expect - i.e. that only the topics with the correct conditional build tag are displayed - yet when you search in the output you get all the topics that have been excluded from the output? The webhelp search data is held in a generated javascript file. I'm afraid webhelp is something I don't use a lot of but someone else may be able to point you in the right direction on this. It may be worth deleting all the files in your output directory and recompiling/publishing in case you are referencing old data?