custom builds - difference TOC/project files

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Petra Zamburek
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Austria - Vienna

custom builds - difference TOC/project files

Unread post by Petra Zamburek »

Hi!

We have a little problem with custom builds and exporting to WebHelp.
Some topics are defined for user build BuildXY only, we don't use/have hidden topics so each topic is included in TOC.

Exporting WebHelp without BuildXY, some of them are handled as they would be a topic not linked in TOC.
They
* are exported as html
* are not included in TOC
* are included in the index
* are included in the result of a search
Exporting to PDF these topics are not included.

These topics are marked for BuildXY in TOC, but looking into the project files, these topics don't show BuildXY

What's the difference regarding the UserBuilds for a topic when working with TOC or the project list?
Isn't the definition for custom builds the same?

Thanks in advance
Petra
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Tim Green
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Re: custom builds - difference TOC/project files

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Petra,

When working with the multiple TOCs it's important to be aware of the special status of the primary/original TOC at the top. That TOC always exports ALL topics, even if they are not included in the TOC, unless the topic files have build options to exclude them. So if you want to make a reduced version of the TOC you should always do that with an additional TOC, never with the main TOC at the top.

When you export to PDF, Word and standard eBooks (ePUB and Kindle), only topics in the TOC can be exported. Topics that are not in the TOC are always excluded from those formats, because they are just electronic representations of a paper document. And in a paper document you cannot have "hidden" chapters.

If you are exporting to WebHelp and topics marked for exclusion are being excluded in the background without TOC entries there are a number of possible reasons for this:

1) You forgot to empty the output folder before exporting

If you do this the search index will still include the topics from the last export where they were included, because it is generated from the files in the output folder. And if you upload the folder contents to your web server the old files will still be there. Similarly, if you do empty the output folder on your computer but not on your web server, the old files will still be there on the server and will be found by search engines.

2) There are links to the files from other links in your project

How this situation is handled depends on your settings for handling dead links in View > Program Options > Compilers. By default, the topics will be included without TOC entries to prevent the links from being dead. You will see warnings about this in the compiler report displayed after publishing. You can change the setting to make the links dead instead, or remove them. However, it is better to use the same build options to replace the links with alternative links or text. See here for instructions:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... dlinks.htm
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Petra Zamburek
Posts: 33
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:33 am
Location: Austria - Vienna

Re: custom builds - difference TOC/project files

Unread post by Petra Zamburek »

Hi Tim,

your answers are always "en detail", that's great.

We thought about using multiple TOCs but for some reasons we decided not to use them (until now - i will consider it).
As we don't use them i didn't realized, that the user builds in the TOC are not the same as in the topic-list.
I don't know why 3 topics had a user build in TOC but not in the topic list, because none of us works in the topic-list.

Anyway, now our user builds are defined 1:1 and it works fine for us.
The warnings for dead links are very helpful to check these things before delivery.

Thank you!

Petra
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