Conditional Build Tags - How Many is Too Many?

Has anyone ever run into problems generating a project because of too many conditional build tags? I'm new to this and considering using quite a few in a particular project - unless I find that overuse will compromise the project on the backend. I'd really like to find that out before I put the work in. Thanks!

Hi there
From the simple standpoint of ease of use, I'd say you want to limit the number to as few as you can.
Can you tell us more about why you are using them? I ask because later versions of RoboHelp offer things that help us out in this area. You may well discover you don't need build tags at all. But we will reserve that judgment until after we know more.
What version of RoboHelp are you using? What RoboFlavor?
You may wish to give the link below a once over.
Click here to view
Cheers... Rick
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Too many conditional build tags?

Hello, all. Can anyone tell me whether RoboHelp limits the number of conditional build tags in a project? We've currently got 14 CBTs in our project. We use about half of them rather extensively throughout the 600+ topics. Is there a point at which we can expect RH to start acting wacky as a result of having too many CBTs to manage?
We're using RH9 with RoboSource Control 3.1.
-Ryan

No number that I am of and certainly 14 should not cause problems.
"Acting wacky" - that could cover a lot. If you mean you are not getting the content you expect, that could be down to conflicts in your build expression. There is a page on my site about build expressions.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

How to Handle Too Many js Files?

I making a website and i want to know how to handle too many js in one page.
And i want to add news ticker but js is conflict with someone
<script src="js/ticker/1.8.jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="js/ticker/all.js"></script>
<script src="js/ticker/jquery.li-scroller.1.0.js"></script>
<script src="js/jquery.slicknav.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/modernizr.custom.js"></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='js/scrollIt.min.js'></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.simple-text-rotator.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.nicescroll.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.appear.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.bxslider.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.fitvids.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/owl.carousel.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.colorbox.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.parallax-1.1.3.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.localscroll-1.2.7-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.scrollTo-1.4.2-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/classie.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/cbpAnimatedHeader.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/template.js"></script>

I trying ti use your code but that's not working,
i want to add one news ticker but that's not work
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.js"></script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='js/scrollIt.min.js'></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.simple-text-rotator.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.nicescroll.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.appear.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery.fitvids.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/owl.carousel.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/template.js"></script>

How much is too many?

Have an iPad 16gb.
Curious - At what point and how many Apps does it take for the device to be affected and slow down?

Ask 300 people, get 300 answers .....
I rarely have more than 4 or 5 apps in my recents tray at any one time. But you can bet your bottom dollar that my browser - and it doesn't matter which of the five that I have I am using at the time - will crash on me every day - day after day - 3 or 4 times a day. I seem to have particularly bad luck with the iPad internet experience. When I use the Mercury browser - and it has done this since day one - I constantly get the low memory warning - even if I have closed all apps and have just restarted the iPad.
That's kind of a bummer for me because my iPad has become more of an mobile internet toy and email reader than a work machine. That's OK - I had no problem spending the money and taking the chance to see what I would get out of it because I wasn't quite sure what I would be using it for but I knew I really wanted one.
There really is a point to this and it is that no one has any way of knowing for certain how many is too many. As I have told you - I can run one solitary app and crash with great frequency. It's just something that only you can find out on your own as you continue to use the device.

How to apply conditional build tags to the topic title that is displayed in Search tab of CHM?

I have the project in which 2 different words are used to reffer to one objects (this word/term depends on the customer). All other information related to functionality, steps, etc. are common. So:
In the help content (body of the files), I created 2 conditional build tags (CBT) for these terms.
In TOC, if topic title contains the term, I created 2 different topics reffered to the single topic file, but the title of the topic shows correct term (depends on CBT).
File names of this topics contain only term1.
The problem occurs when I generate CHM for CBT2 and search for the term1 (marked with CBT1) using the Search tab. All occurrencies where term1 presence in the file name, appear in the found results.
How can I resolve the issue?
These topics must be found by search (that's why "Exclude from search" option is not a decision).

Ahhh, you are correct. I believe it was Version 10 introduced that.
So here's what I'd suggest. Even though you are unable to use a variable in a Topic Title, it can still be used in other places such as the TOC, the Index and in the Topic content. So I'd still recommend that you declare and use a variable for those items. Just to simplify things.
As for any topics that have the term in the title, you could create two topics. One with the term one way and the other with the term the opposite way. Then use a Conditional Build Tag to exclude and remove the one that shouldn't be found.
This may cause you a bit of a maintenance issue by having the same topic content in more than one place. (one for each topic)
So to overcome that, you would be able to add the main body information to a topic and use an Inline Frame in the two topics that would then simply be shells with appropriate Topic Titles. Either that or declare a snippet and use the snippet in both topics. Put the main part in the snippet.
Cheers... Rick

How much can too many imports slow inititialization down?

How much can too many imports slow applet inititialization down?
I have seen our company's sorce code for some huge applets they have written. In many, many cases, the imports at the beginning of each file are written something like this...
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.border.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;Only certain portion of these imports are actually used. Does this sort of thing really impact the applets loading speed? I know it will obviously take at least a little longer but will the user even notice?

You are not actually importing the classes, but rather making the names of the classes available.

How to fix: Too many Primary Partitions ? G770

Hello,
I am trying to install PuppyLinuxSlacko.5.4 from a LiveUsb to a unallocated-Partition in my Lenovo-G770 Laptop, Win7 .
My G770 shows that I have two disks: C:\ and D:\ .
But the Using (Linux) GParted program shows there are 4-Primary Partitions already (see pic GParted01.png below) .
http://www.vmars316.com/ShowMe/GParted01.png
And when I try to Format the Unallocated Partition, I get an Error Msg (GParted02.png below) .
http://www.vmars316.com/ShowMe/GParted02.png
Pls, How to fix: Too many Primary Partitions ?
Thanks...vmars316...Vernon

* Questions added to original Post:
I am trying to install PuppyLinuxSlacko.5.4 from a LiveUsb to an unallocated-Partition in my Lenovo-G770 Laptop, Win7 .
My G770 shows that I have two disks: C:\ and D:\ .
But the Using (Linux) GParted program shows there are 4-Primary Partitions already (see pic GParted01.png below) .
http://www.vmars316.com/ShowMe/GParted01.png
And when I try to Format the Unallocated Partition, I get an Error Msg (GParted02.png below) .
http://www.vmars316.com/ShowMe/GParted02.png
Pls, How to fix: Too many Primary Partitions ?
I've been told that to try and fix it in Linux is too risky .
I set up the unallocated 20gb partition.
Can I just merge it into the 29gb Extended Partition ?
If I did merge, How would I access it ? Which Partition is it an extension of ?
I am on thin ice here, and would rather fix the prob in Window7 , because I am brand new to Linux .
Here is the PartitionsDetail using AomeiPartitionAssistant -note the differences:
http://www.vmars316.com/ShowMe/AoemiPartitionWindows.png
Is there a way to tell what's in the partitions , especially the two 29gb partitions and the 14gb partition ?
Worst case: Is there a way to reset my 'Lenovo G770' computer back to factory settings under win7 ?
I think I'll add this Post to the Win7 Forum, since I hope to fix it via Win7 .
Thanks...vmars316...Vernon

Conditional Build Tags Bugs

Hello,
I have problems with Conditional Build Tags since I upgraded from RH7 to RH9 .
I am using the following software:
Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 3.
Version control software (RoboSource Control 3.1) as we share projects between 3 authors
And I mainly work in wysywyg view.
When I open a project on my PC, the conditional build tags I've defined in a topic apply themselves unwanted and randomly.
The deletion of conditional build tags from the topic Properties > Advanced tab > Content-level tags > Remove button does not work properly. The selected tag is removed only for the paragraph pointed by the mouse cursor. When I navigate down in my document, this tag is still present on other paragraphs.
Sometimes, I must switch to the html view to remove the tags manually.
I noticed that a thread has seent on May 5, 2011, for which Peter Grainge gave a link to a TechNote with a fix. I tried to access this TechNote, unsuccessfully.
I also read that Adobe RoboHelp Service Release 9.0.1 is intended to fix the following: CBT gets applied randomly in topic content on switching between the HTML view and the Design view in certain scenarios.
However, my scenario is completely different as CBT gets applied randomly when OPENING the project in WYSYWYG.
Moreover, my administrator told me he has already downloaded this release.
With single sources, our team produces online helps for various versions and products. This situation is very uncomfortable for me, and my colleagues, as the produced documentation may contain bad information for a version or a product or may miss information. My work is not reliable.
Has anyone encountered this situation and found a solution?
Thanks for your help.

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your help.
Effectively, the patch was not installed.
I ran the update and did not need any passwords to do it. The About RoboHelp HTML now shows 9.0.1.232. However, the version of the PolarisProjectFile.dll still shows 9.0.0.228. Is this normal?
The IT administrator is sure to have downloaded this release. He thinks something got wrong during the downloading process and that it failed.
This release solved some of my problems:
I opened again the projects in which I identified that tags were messed up.
- For some, tags were still messed up. I had to fix them again manually. I checked them in and re-opened them. They were clean.
- For others, they re-opened with tags properly assigned (miraculously).
I do not understand these differences in behavior.
I do not feel confident when I open a project. We manage so many topics that it is impossible to identify those in which tags are messed up. How can I be sure that tags are correctly assigned? It is so an uncomfortable situation !
Moreover, I identified another problems yesterday.
I wanted to open a project that another member of the team upgraded to RH9 last week. RH9 proposed me to upgrade it.
A member of the team wanted to open a project that I upgraded on my PC. RH9 proposed her to upgrade it.
We removed these projects from our local directories and used the Open project from Version Control again. And it was OK.
This situation should not occur. What do you think?
The other members of the team have the patch 9.01.232 (and the same version of dll as me).
The IT thinks that these problems are linked with my user account.
Historically, Windows XP was installed in French on my PC whereas my colleagues were in English.
As I had so many problems after upgrading to RH9, my Windows XP is now in English.
However, I keep having problems (those mentioned in this discussion).
The solution proposed now is to change my machine for a new one.
Could this be really the final solution?
Do you have any opinion on this matter?
Thanks for your help.

Conditional Build Tags Break Links

Hi all,
I have a solid, 3-years old, RHX5 project that works fine.
Delivering a part of it using
conditional build tags, I found out that some of links are
broken.
The topics configuration looks like this:
Parent topic - with a link to several
child topics
(many) Child topic(s) - each with a
link to the parent topic
Now, using conditional build tags, all of the topics go to
the main deliverable and are marked accordingly.
Some of the topics go to the secondary deliverable. This
includes the parent topic and some of the child topics.
So, the parent topic is marked with both tags, and the links
that point at topics that doesn't belong to the secondary
deliverable are tagged accordingly. This part works fine.
The links that belong to both deliverables are tagged with
both tags. Some of them - not all - are broken.
In these cases, a child topic exists in the deliverable, but
the link from the parent topic is broken.
I have deleted all links and written them anew. This did not
solve the problem.
Where elese should I look into?
Thanks in advance (please help the poor writer regain his
weekend :-)
Avi

quote:
Originally posted by:
Peter Grainge
It sounds like topics that belong to both versions, like the
parent, have both tags. I am wondering why they have any tag as you
only need a tag on a topic that you might want to exclude.
Hi Peter,
Until this project, I had two tags, when each topic belongs
to either tag A or tag B, and no topic belongs to both. (the reason
to this configuration was to keep everything on the same source,
when topics could move from tag A to tag B.)
Now, in the current project, I have a new tag, C. Topic may
belong to:
Tag A only
Tag B only
Tag A + C
Tag B + C
Tag C only - there are very few such topics (maybe 5 or so).
These topics are not problematic.
The problem of the broken links always occur among topics of
the type "tag A + C".
How do I proceed from here?

Conditional Build Tags Bug

I have several problems with RoboHelp9. I am using Windows7 and 64bit. This is the one causing the most trouble.
Conditional build tags apply themselves unwanted and unassigned.
The deletion of conditional build tags at the topic properties tag (right side window) does not work.
I have to repeatedly go back and forth to the dialog and keep selecting and deleting.
Some of the conditional build tags go clear, most don't.
I go into the topic directly in the wysiwyg view and manually try to select and delete them, and they delete only with difficulty.
After running through a long topic and using every method available to clear conditional build tags, I saved the project, then went in to manually apply cbtags, of which I am only using two.
After applying them, and switching to the html window to adjust image sizes manually (because thru the wysiwyg interface the process takes too long), I find that the conditional build tag I applied to several tables and texts at the top of my topic have now applied themselves unasked to a number of the texts and even tables which I had cleared of all cbtags.
I have just about had it with this program.
This is only one of the many problems and bugs I have found and been trying to work around.
I suppose that the solution to my problem is to not use conditional build tags at all, but I am working with about five years' worth of legacy technical documents that have all been upgraded to RH9 and as I am looking at them to make the standard revisions, I am noticing this phenomenon of wrongly applied cbtags in other projects.
I would rate this as a bug of very high and critical importance.
Has anyone seen this under the consitions stated? (RH9, upgraded RH7 projects, Windows7, 64bit).

Sorry, I should have said see the Announcements.
http://forums.adobe.com/community/robohelp/robohelp_general_discussion
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RH6 crashes with th and conditional build tags

Hello together,
The attached code worked fine with RH X5, but leads to a
crash with X6. To fix, you have to replace the <th> by
<td>, but it is not too easy to find the topic within a
project. The fix is quite easy, but it is hard to find in a big
project.
This happens, when the conditional build tag is used.
Thanks and best regards,
Katrin Lusser

Hello Peter,
My wife created the topic with X3 or X5.
She just tried again with X6 and after several changes (set
heading, insert, delete, etc.) she had the same constellation.
Unfortunately, until now, she could not find out the exact way to
reproduce. But it is definitely possible. We will post here, when
we find out, how to do it.
Best regards,
Michael

Conditional Build Tags lost converting from X5

When I did a trial conversion of an existing RH Office X5 project to RH8 it lost all of the Conditional Build Tags. As the X5 project was made up of 29 Word documents with many tags it would be a big job to go through all of the topics and redo the work. The company for which I work supplies multiple software products using common forms and the wording for each product is different, therefore when I compile help for each product the Conditional Build Tags are very important. Is there any way that the tags could be retained when converting to RH8.

Thanks for the suggestion.
I have created all of the Conditional Build Tags and when I look at the
properties it lists the Topics that they are used in. Howver, when I look at
the properties of the individual topics the check boxes are all clear for
all Conditional Build Tags.
I have also noticed that none of the Content level conditionality has been
preserved during the upgrade. This is a major problem as it would take a
long time to go through all of the documents and re-apply the tags to text
and graphics. If I do upgrade is this something that I would have to do
manually?
I have upgraded to 8.0.2
Regards
Tony Champ

Conditional build tags with character styles and ignored text

RoboHelp HTML v8.0.2.208
Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 3 with 2 GB of RAM
Output: WebHelp and HTML Help
I have recently moved my projects from RH HTML X5 to RH HTML 8 and this is when the following problem appeared. I use lots of conditional build tags within the help projects. Some of these tags are for my own use for reference and I combine these with character styles containing a coloured background (highlight) so that they show up in the WebHelp or HTML Help output (e.g. text to identify the software version that the field/feature/text was added, reminders to check details, insertion of bug ID numbers, design document names, etc.). These areas of text are stripped out of the final build for customers by using a conditional build expression.
What I have noticed is that if a paragraph contains text with a conditional build tag applied AND that tagged text has a character style applied AND an unknown word within the conditional build tag is ignored (with the HTML tag <?rh-ignored text="word_to_be_ignored" ?>), saving the topic, closing it, then re-opening it shows that the conditional build text has stretched to the next conditional build tag, or to the end of the topic if there aren’t any other conditional build tags. This also happens by switching from Design View to HTML View. Note that this doesn’t happen if Ignore All is applied to the unknown word.
This doesn’t just apply to projects converted from RH X5. I created a new test project in RH8 and the same behaviour was observed. Similar behaviour occurred very occasionally in RH X5 but that seemed to be down to HTML tags being nested incorrectly.
The largest project contains around 1200 topics and with many hundreds of conditional build text areas this now causes a problem. I’ll probably have to locate every ignored word in an area of conditional text within each project, set it to Ignore All and then manually remove and re-apply the conditional build tags, unless someone can come up with something clever. Can anyone else replicate this and should it be logged as a bug?

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.

Easily remove in-line Conditional Build Tags?

I'm wondering if there's an easy way to remove all Conditional Build Tags (CBT) inside a topic. Has anyone come up with a quick way to do this?
The problem I'm running into is I want to remove some CBTs on some list items. But it's not easy to remove the CBTs because the right-click menu item to deselect the CBT is grayed out unless I select a certain sub-set of the list just right. Sometimes this even happens on a single sentence. I have to select a part of the sentence and remove that part first and then the other part. It seems due to in-line formatting that's affecting this. I'm hoping there's an easier way. Any scripts out there that do this?
I can probably figure out how to do it in Notepad++ with regular expression pattern matching, but that's a hassle if there's an easier solution.
I'm using RH 9.02.271.

If you right click in a paragraph you should see either Remove Attribute or Remove Attributes.
If Remove Attribute and the attribute is a CBT, then Rh will remove it cleanly.
If Remove Attributes, when you click the option you will get a dialog and can select the span tags you want removed.
Not quite what you want but it does work cleanly.
Back up first though just in case you remove too much.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

The extra space created due to Conditional Build Tags

Hello,
I am authoring a online help file, for a web application. As different content is needed for the 4 different roles of the user, I have used Single Sourcing option and made use of conditional build tags for the content that is not common among the different roles. I even have images which are difffernt for the differnt roles. I have used conditional build tags for these too. The problem is that, extra space appears in place of the images which are not applicable to build I am publishing. Is there any workaround other than modifying the HTML files to remove the extra space added?
Regards,
Deepti Korwar

hi Deepti,
I have seen this issue on multi-level lists (in RH9) when using soft returns (Shift-Enter) within the lists.
An extra space is added before images marked with CBTs. But this only caused problems in print.
Are you seeing this space on all outputs or just print?
Can you paste a code snippet from one of the offending list?
Perhaps you can get round this by opening up the HTML tab and carefully examining and perhaps moving the CBTs.
e.g. <?rh-cbt_start condition="xyz" ?><img src="xyz" > <?rh-cbt_end ?></p><?rh-list_end ?>
Will be helpful to see the code.
thanks
Craig

Conditional Build Tags - How Many is Too Many?

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