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Sarah-Mare
Participant
March 25, 2013
Question

Single-sourcing - looking for a better way to manage image differences

  • March 25, 2013
  • 1 reply
  • 466 views

We are using RoboHelp 10. We put images of the ribbon in our procedures. We are single-sourcing Help for two different platforms... so we will have two sets of images, because the UI on each platform is slightly different.

We want to use one set of ribbon images in the output for Platform A and the other set in the output for Platform B. I know that I could achieve this by using differently-named images and putting both the image for platform A and the image for platform B in the procedure and then using conditional logic to determine which one goes into the output for each platform.

But, what I would prefer (if it's posssible) is to have a folder of images for platform A and another folder containing identically-named images for platform B. In the Help procedure I'd like to reference just one image filename and then use logic to determine which image folder I should be pointing to. 

Even better would be a cascading approach. Have a folder of common images (there are images common to both platforms) and separate folders for images specific to a platform. Use logic to attempt to get the image from the platform folder and then (if not found) look in the common folder.

Is this sort of thing possible with RoboHelp?  Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

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1 reply

Willam van Weelden
Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
March 26, 2013

Hi and welcome to the forum,

How about using variables? You can define multiple variable sets: 1 default and 1 for every customer. On generation you select the variable set you want to use and voila, your output uses the correct images. Best of all, you only need to define the images that are different from the default images. Take a look at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WSBE4EE60C-6FBB-4062-AF93-27F9C233D0C3.html for more information.

Greet,

Willam

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Sarah-MareAuthor
Participant
March 27, 2013

Hi William

Thanks for your suggestion. We already use variable sets for text differences...but I hadn't realized I could use them for images. I just experimented with this approach and find it works neatly.

My only concern is whether it will be difficult to identify missing images. Usually I scan the list of images in the Project Manager Pod and check that there are no red crosses on them. I won't be able to do this, if they are hidden away within user variables. Any thoughts on how I can easily check that all my images are present (we have approx 150 to check)?

Cheers, Sarah

S
Sarah-MareAuthor
Participant
March 27, 2013

Okay, in re-reading this, I'm going to alter my suggestion a tad. Create TWO topics. One for Platform A images and one for Platform B images.


Hi Rick

I like the dummy topic solution.

For us, sometimes 'images go missing' because of the way we manage our project files. We work in a team and use Visual Studio for source control. If writer A adds an image to the RoboHelp project, but forgets to add it to source control, then when Writer B gets the latest project files from source control the image will be missing for Writer B. We periodically check for missing images.

Cheers, Sarah

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