TOC Conditional Build Tags

I am considering upgrading from Robohelp version X5 to
version 7. I was actually really interested in the feature offered
by version 6 that would allow conditional build tags to be assigned
to TOC entries. Is this feature available in version 7 also? I'm
sure this is a sillly question, but I just want to be certain. I
could not find this information anywhere online.
Thanks!

It is indeed still in RH7.

Similar Messages

Conditional build tags/expressions in the TOC

Hello all,
I've run into another issue with my conversion, this time with Conditional build tags and expressions.
All seems to be fine in my topics, but not in my TOC.
Some of my topic titles have words that have conditional text applied in the source FrameMaker document.
These topic titles also appear in the TOC that's automatically generated when I link my Frame book to Robohelp.
I set the conditional build expression in the Webhelp settings dialog and then Save and Generate.
These topic titles appear to pick up the correct conditional build expression in the topics themselves, but the TOC heading shows multiple conditions (including the condition I've set to "Exclude").
So, for example, if my topic title is
"Conventions in this documentonline help"
WHERE
document > should appear in PDF only
and
online help > should appear in Webhelp only
I can get the Webhelp topic to use the title "Conventions in this online help"
but the corresponding TOC heading looks like this:
"Conventions in this documentonline help"
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Sue

Conditional build tags are not imported to TOC from FrameMaker content. However, one can follow another approach to achieve this. One can manage the Conditional build expression in FrameMaker itself and import the filterted content in RoboHelp. Inorder to achieve this, set the conditional build expression in FrameMaker. Turn on the setting in RoboHelp to "Apply FrameMaker Conditional Text Build Expression". [File->Project Settings->Import->Edit(FrameMaker Settings)->Other Settings]
This way RoboHelp will import only the filtered content with Conditional Build Tags resolved as per the expression applied in FrameMaker.
Mayank

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

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

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.

Conditional build tags applied to topic but it still displays in my TOC?

I have applied topic level conditional build tags to topics.
The corresponding books are still being displayed in my TOC. I
checked the 4 topics and the condition is applied at the topic
level. What am I missing here?

Hi Renee
If I recall correctly, you were also using Conditional
tagging on almost everything in the TOC too.
It's worth noting that:
1. Sometimes the tagging will conflict and you won't get the
results you were expecting
2. Any topic inside a book should disappear if you are
tagging at topic level. But the book will remain if at least one
topic linked to a page inside the book wasn't excluded and remains.
Cheers... Rick

Conditional build tags for TOC in Robohelp X5

HI, Can we apply conditional build tags for TOC in robohelp
X5. I know this feature exists in robohelp X6 and x7. But as i am
working on x5, i want to know whether we can apply conditional
build tags for TOC. if yes, whats the process?

Hello again Abraham
Okay, so you have a book named Privileges. It is linked to a
topic named the same, right? And inside this book is a book named
Billing. I'm guessing your TOC structure would look like this:
* Privileges
**** Billing
******** Topic one
******** Topic two
You seem confused that the Privileges book doesn't disappear
when you exclude the Privileges topic. If that were to happen,
would you also want the Billing book and all topics inside to
disappear? Because if the Privileges book were to be removed,
anything and everything inside the book would also be removed.
Indeed to remove a book you need to coax all topics linked
inside (or inside sub books) to disappear too.
Cheers... Rick

RH 11: Conditional Build tags applied: Content still showing up in search

Hello. I am generating WebHelp using conditional build tags using RH 11.
I have marked books in the TOC with a CBT of Not in 6.1.
I generated help and excluded content marked with the CBT Not in 6.1.
When the Web Help is generated, the books marked with the CBT do not display in the TOC. However, if I do a search, topics that are under the books and therefore should not be included in the output have search results returned.
Is there a scenario in which topics that have been excluded from the generated help would still show up in search?
Your help is greatly appreciated.
Jenny

Hi Jenny
Indeed there are a few reasons this may happen.
First, simply excluding a topic or a book in the TOC simply makes sure that the TOC doesn't have a link pointing to the topic. Normally, I'll just tag the topic itself and ignore tagging the TOC. If a topic has been excluded, it won't appear in the TOC.
In the WebHelp SSL recipe, click to expand the Content Categories section and look at the settings on the right. You might try ensuring the following option is enabled. It's named Exclude Unreferenced Topics from Output. As long as nothing else is linking to the topic, ensuring it is removed from the TOC *SHOULD* cause it to no longer be included.
Cheers... Rick

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

Conditional Build Tags...weird behavior?

If I apply a conditional build tag to a topic from the TOC
tab, the topic gets included in the output even if I have specified
that tag to be excluded.
However, if I apply the same conditional build tag to a topic
from the Project tab, then the topic gets excluded (as expected)
from the output because I have specified that tag to be excluded.
Is this inconsistency in behavior by design? I looked at the
RoboHelp Help, and it appears there is nothing wrong with adding
conditional build tags to topics from the TOC tab.
Can someone shed light on this? I am using Adobe RoboHelp
HTML 6, Build 099.
Thanks,
K
P.S.: It appears RoboHelp is completely ignoring the
conditional build tags that I am adding to topics from the TOC tab.
If I see these tagged topics from the Project tab or the Topics
tab, there is no color shading for these topics. The color shading
for the topics shows only if I tag the topics from the Project Tab
or the Topics tab.

Here's a copy-paste from the RH Help...It didn't explain
things the way you did. :-(
Applying conditional build tags to Table of Contents
Use conditional build tags to design and create multiple
versions of your project from a single set of source files. After
creating the conditional build tag, you can apply it to both books
and pages in the TOC for maximum control over the final results.
From the TOC view, you can apply conditional build tags to Topics
also. When you generate a project, you can define conditional build
expressions to include or exclude the book or page in the TOC, from
the output.
Show Me
Use this procedure to apply conditional build tags to books
and pages in the TOC. When you exclude such a tag from your output,
the book or page in the TOC, is not included in the output.
To apply a conditional build tag to a book or page in the
TOC:
Option 1:
Create the conditional build tag.
Click the TOC tab to view the Topic list.
Select a book or page to which you want to apply a
conditional build tag.
Right-click and select Apply Conditional Build Tag, and
choose the Tag you want to apply. The tag is applied to the
selected book or page.
When you generate the project, you can define conditional
build expressions to include or exclude the tagged books or pages
in the TOC, from the output. (A TOC to which a tag has not been
applied, will be included in the output.)
Option 2:
Create the conditional build tag.
Click the TOC tab to view the Topic list.
Select the book or page to which you want to apply a
conditional build tag.
From the Format menu, select Apply Conditional Build Tag, and
then choose a tag. The conditional build tag is applied to the
selected book or page in the TOC.
When you generate the project, you can define conditional
build expressions to include or exclude tagged books or pages in
the TOC, from the output. (A TOC to which a tag has not been
applied, will be included in the output.)
To apply multiple tags:
From the Format menu, select Apply Conditional Build Tag, and
choose New/Multiple. The Conditional Build Tag dialog box appears.
Click Check All to apply all the tags, or select specific
tags to apply to the book or page in the TOC.
Click OK.
If your project is under version control, these steps may
include more options. Click here for more information.
Tips:
You can also apply conditional build tags to topics, topic
content, folders, and Index.
To verify the tags applied to topics, topic areas, TOC, and
Index, or rename a tag, or change the color of a tag, click the
Project tab, expand the Conditional Build Tags folder, and
double-click the tag. You can make the desired changes in the
Conditional Build Tag Properties dialog box.
Ensure that you remove textual references to the excluded
book or page, such as text links, which refer to the tagged book or
page in the TOC. (Hotspots are not active for excluded topics.)
If you generate Printed Documentation, TOC with Conditional
Build tags are not excluded from printing.

Conditional Build Tags Ignored in Header

Using RoboHelp HTML 8.
When generating Microsoft HTML help, I have a conditional build tag which has been applied to the contents of the header and footer.
Once I view the .chm, I still see the header and footer. There is a graphic in the header and text in the footer which are excluded, but the header and footer both have pattern backgrounds, which are images, that do not get excluded.
Has anyone else seen this behavior, and/or know a workaround?
Thanks!

Conditional build tags are not imported to TOC from FrameMaker content. However, one can follow another approach to achieve this. One can manage the Conditional build expression in FrameMaker itself and import the filterted content in RoboHelp. Inorder to achieve this, set the conditional build expression in FrameMaker. Turn on the setting in RoboHelp to "Apply FrameMaker Conditional Text Build Expression". [File->Project Settings->Import->Edit(FrameMaker Settings)->Other Settings]
This way RoboHelp will import only the filtered content with Conditional Build Tags resolved as per the expression applied in FrameMaker.
Mayank

Conditional Build Tags Break on Chinese

Using RH7 (for word) on Win XP with Word 2007.
Generating HTMLHelp (chm only)
I am trying to take full advantage of Conditional Build Tag
to implement single source output. I have created my help files and
had the text translated into Chinese. I had the person doing the
translation simply add the Chinese text to the end of every English
paragraph. Then I created conditional build tags for English and
Chinese and applied the build tags the appropriate bodies of text.
If I generate "Chinese" it appears to work correctly, however
when I generate "English" I get the English text as well as a few
characters of Chinese at the end of each paragraph. The Chinese
characters that are displayed are seemingly random characters from
the Chinese text, but I can not find any rhyme or reason as to why
those particular characters are inserted.
Things I have done to troubleshoot...
- Explicitly excluded Chinese text from output (expression
was "NOT Chinese") (No Change)
- Added line breaks between English and Chinese (No Change.)
- Changed the font encoding ("SimSun" and "Arial Unicode MS")
(No Change)
I only tried this because the original Chinese text used
both fonts.
- Removed punctuation from Chinese text. (No Change)
I suspect there is a problem in RH7 for word when using
Chinese characters, but I bought the new version of RH because it
was supposed to be able to handle the Chinese characters. Well, it
turns out the only official support for Chinese is when using
RH-HTML (which was not mentioned when purchasing.) I have about 10
years of work done in RH for Word and am not excited to migrate to
HTML since some things don't transfer over when importing the
project to HTML, like the conditional build tags for example.
I have uploaded my doc, and an image that helps illustrate
the problem.
The Doc: Job_Console_ExtraTech.doc
The Image: Job_Console_ExtraTech.jpg
They are on the Support Portal FTP site...
Here is the information I used to get there...
https://www.adobe.com/support/crm_portal/ssi/ftpinfo.html
If anyone else has had success with conditional build tags in
RH7 for Word using Chinese text, I would really like to know if
there are any tricks or secrets that might help me get this working
correctly.
Thanks, J

I was a bit bummed when I found out I couldn't do the TOC
with conditionals either. But I made the help files intentionally
graphical so that the TOC, index, and searches are of less
importance. I am using the help files as a sort of graphical
trainer for an application suite.
It is disappointing that Adobe touted the multilingual
functionality of version 7 and this is what they meant, but it's
better than nothing.
I am just confused about how the Chinese characters are
showing up when the conditional build tags are clearly supposed to
be omitting them.
I think the next step is to embrace the HTML transition and
see if I have better luck there. The only daunting thing about that
is recreating all the conditional build tags.

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.

Conditional build tags on books

I want to hide a TOC-book on certain condition. How can I do
that? Are there any things like Conditional build tags on books?
Thanks in advance.
-karl

Hi karlroth
Unfortunately, there is nothing in RoboHelp at the moment
which will directly allow this. But if you cause all pages and
books inside the desired book to disappear you will remove the
book. I've outlined how to do this at
this
link.
Cheers... Rick

Apply Conditional Build tag to Browse Sequence

Hi Everyone-
I'm trying to control 6 conditional builds in one project. I
have 6 working indexes and TOCs using build tags. I was wondering
if there was a way to apply tags or somehow conditionalize the
browse sequences. I'm running RH7.
Thanks in advance!
Wendy

Hi Wendy:
It seems you are having the same problem that I did. I have
different User Guides however some of the Guides may have the same
procedure. I was trying to setup the search so only one of the
topics would return on the search and not 3 of them. I found
something that actually had to do with RoboHelp x3 but I applied it
to RoboHelp x5, where you need to do the following.
Create build TAG1 - this is for the ones you do not want
search to return.
Create build TAG2 - this is for the ones you do want the
search to return.
Apply the tags accordingly to each procedure accordingly.
Make copies of the following files in the WebHelp directorys
just incase:
Folder WHDATA:
whftdata0.htm
whwdata0.htm
Folder WHXDATA:
whftdata0.xml
whfwdata0.xml
Folder WHGDATA
whlstf0.htm
GENERATE PRIMARY LAYOUT (This should be set to Webhelp)
1. Define the Conditional Build Expressioin to exclude topics
that are not wanted in the search:
A. Click the Define button.
This wil bring up the Define Conditional Build Tag
Expression dialog.
B. Click the Advance button.
C. Click the Not button.
D. Select TAG1 from the drop-down list of Available
Conditional Build Tags.
E. Click the Add Tag button.
F. Click OK
G. Select your WebHelp Options, and then click Finish.
When you pull up your test or Dev site and perform a search
you should only come up with one topic. I just finished this and it
worked. Also, as a reminder I am working in x5 and not x7.
Good Luck,
Amy

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

Switching off conditional build tags

I now have quite a few conditional build tags in my RH7 project and it's getting a bit difficult to see what's what in my topics as they are covered in coloured hash lines. Is it possible to switch off the view of individual tags? For various jobs I need to see certain ones but not others.
Also, can I just check that I am using them right?
Our software has web and windows versions so I have a 'Web' tag and a 'Win' tag for where the content differs and I create different outputs for each.
Within the web version, we now have 2 different sets of customers who each need slightly different content and different names/logos etc. So I have created 'Customer X' and 'Customer Y' tags as well as 2 separate tables of contents. So in places, I have text which has 2 tags on it, 'Web' and 'Customer X' or 'Customer Y'.
Does this sound ridiculous? Is there a better way?
I know I could have used user defined variables for the company names but I would still need the cond build tags for the content so figured it would keep it simpler just to use tags.
Helen

Hi there
Sorry, no way to turn off individual tags. You can turn off the shading if you like.
Click View > Show > Conditional areas.
You might also consider submitting a wish form to ask for this type of functionality to be added to a future version.
Cheers... Rick
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TOC Conditional Build Tags

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