Text coded with conditional build tags still showing up in TOC even if tag is "excluded"

[adrianaharper]

I am using TCS2, Windows XP.

After creating a book in FM and coding with conditional build tags, I imported into RH. When I generate, I have the output tag set:

NOT NoOUtput AND NOT Internal AND NOT Print - I want to generate my External, Online Help webhelp. And it works like a charm. Except that:

• In the TOC, I can still see headings for things that are "internal" - when I click on it, they don't go anywhere... but I don't want them to appear in the TOC!!

It seems to be excluded from the index and the search. I am sure I am just missing a step or something...

In looking through the forums I found this... http://forums.adobe.com/message/751847#751847 -- I don't know if it is still applicable since it seems to be referring to RH6 (which is a bit away from RH 8 that I am using)...

Any help is appreciated!

TIA,

Adriana

[adrianaharper]

If anyone knows anything on this topic, even random suggestions...help is appreciated!

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

Create a simple RH project with four topics. Create three tags and apply one each to three topics. Link those topics to a TOC. Then generate some outputs. That will give you a simple tutorial on how tagging works in RH on its own. Happy to help with any questions on that.

Maybe once you have that mastered it will reveal something about what is going wrong in your FM > RH scenario.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Follow me @petergrainge

[adrianaharper]

Thanks. The issue is that while the text is coded as conditional the TOPIC (as it is seen in RH) is not. However, when I update the FM files and consequently update the RH project (as it is a FM project imported by reference) It removes the manually coding I have done to the topics in RH as conditional. So... I assume I need to do something different in FM... but the text, chapters, headings, etc. are all coded conditionally so I don't know what else to do... or I need to find a way that RH does NOT remove my manually-applied conditional tags from the topics when I update my FM files and update the RH files.

[adrianaharper]

I think this maybe belongs in the TCS 2 forum now that it has been pointed out to me that my issue is perhaps in the FM files and their tags and NOTthe RH files... could it be moved, please?  Or closed, and I can re-post...

Thank you,

Adriana

[Peter Grainge]

Your post has been rehoused! Hope one of the FM people can help you.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Follow me @petergrainge

[adrianaharper]

Thanks.

As some additional info...

When I make a change in RH (even if i save it) and then update my FM files and update the RH project, it overwrites the change I made in RH. So I know I can set topics in RH to conditional output but then as soon as I change things in FM and update my files, the conditional tagging I did in RH is gone.  Is there a way to have it not overwrite OTHER these changes? I understand that, to a certain extent, this takes away from the point of single-source authoring... but IMHO it would be cool if you could choose a few things (somehow) that don't get overwritten (outside of the CSS, which I have figured out).

TIA,

Adriana

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I thought I remembered seeing some webinar by RJ with him mentioning some flag on a topic that you can mark in RH as "never update from FM", but I could just be mis-remembering...

[Guest]

Adriana,

You can preserve the modifications to an imported FM file in RH by right-clicking over the imported file in the RH Project Manager > Properties > File Update Settings tab, and selecting the topic(s) that you do not want modified when performing a Force Update command. I never use this feature, since as you point out, you lose all single sourcing capabilities for the topics you have selected to preserve.

Since your issue appears to be centered on conditional tags in RH, why not do all of your conditional tags in FM instead of RH? Or am I misunderstanding the core problem here?

[adrianaharper]

Hi Daggins,

Thanks - that is good info to have. But as we all agree, that does take away from the point of single-sourcing.

You aren't misunderstsanding exactly... I am doing all my conditional tagging in FM and it works like a charm in terms of the PDFs that I generate from FM, and even the conditionally tagged text in RH shows/hides correctly. The issue is I am also importing my index and TOC from FM... and even if I have an entire file in FM tagged as conditional (all the text is tagged as conditional, I don't know if you can tag a file as conditional), the file name as a heading it still appears in the RH TOC. There is no text... but in my view it shouldn't appear in the TOC either (it looks like just a broken link when I generate my online help) - this is not ideal.

[Arnis Gubins]

Adriana,

If you require conditional "files" in your FM books, then the only way to do this is to create different instances of the .book files omittting those for the various versions that you require.

[adrianaharper]

Hi Arnis-

Thanks. I know that I can exclude files when I'm generating the book in FM... it's RH that's the problem. It doesn't seem to get that if all the text is set as conditional including the TOC marker it shouldn't show up in the TOC.

Generating and maintaining multiple .book files is not feasible (or at least, would be my worst case scenario solution). I need a way for RH to omit conditional info in the TOC, when its hidden accordingly.

[Arnis Gubins]

Is there anything useful in this RoboHelp blog or have you already seen it? :

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/11/how_to_convert_framemaker_toc.html

Have you tried having RoboHelp build the TOC instead?

Otherwise, have you tried mif2go? <g,d,&r> 

[Jeff_Coatsworth · Accepted solution]

@Daggins - that's what I was talking about! I knew it was in there somewhere ;>)

@adrianaharper - If it's working correctly in the PDFs you create in FM; what does the TOC look like in FM? You're just pulling it into RH when you import/link right? If the offending internal topics are showing up in the FM TOC, then you would expect them to appear in RH too. You either need to kill them off in FM or kill them off in RH.

[adrianaharper]

Yes- my best bet appears to be to set the conditional text the way I need it in FM, re-generate TOC and index and then update RH with the flag of (use FM conditional text settings) set. That appears (so far) to be working correctly.

Thx all,

Adriana

[adrianaharper]

Note of caution to anyone doing this- make sure RH is CLOSED when you are changing/re-generating the settings in FM. Otherwise, RH seems to get very upset and crash/swallow the FM file altogether.

-A 🙂