Alternate Topic Name

[Tonea Morrow]

I have a topic whose name is too long. It is fine for electronic files, but when the PDF is made, it over-runs the space allocated to the name in the header. So, I put in an IF PDF Then Name and gave it a shorter name for use in the PDF. I ran the html output, and the name stayed the same as it is supposed to do. I ran the PDF and the name was not shortened.

Any suggestions?

Tonea

[Tim Green]

Hi Tonea,

My guess is that you are using the normal HEADINGx variables for the topic headings in the Topics section of the PDF template. Those variables get their text from the TOC entries, not from the topic header. If you want to get the topic header text, which will include your conditions, then you need to use the HEADINGLONGx versions of the variables. Those get the text from the topic header.

Otherwise, if the text with the conditions is in the topic header or anywhere in the body of the topic then it should work, if you use one of these models:

[IF_PDF>PDF Version of the Header[ELSE>Other Formats Version<END]
[IF_PDF>PDF Version of the Header<END][IF_HTML>WebHelp Version<END]

[Tonea Morrow]

I did a search in the help files for both H&M and Print Manual Designer. I couldn't find headinglong. I need more information if I'm going to investigate this.

Thanks,

Tonea

[Tonea Morrow]

Never mind. I found it. Yes, that works. Thank you.

Tonea

[Tonea Morrow]

Nope. That was only a partial fix. It fixed it where the string is too long in the header, but not in the Table of Contents (where headinglong is not supported). Nor did it fix it in the PDF's TOC thumbnails.

Any more ideas?

[Tim Green]

Nope. That was only a partial fix. It fixed it where the string is too long in the header, but not in the Table of Contents (where headinglong is not supported). Nor did it fix it in the PDF's TOC thumbnails.

That's normal. You can't have alternative titles in the TOC, that is where the short titles belong.

[Tonea Morrow]

duh, duh, dumb!

Yep, I need to switch the long name for the short one and then use the If>then to make the long name appear only where I want. Got it. Will try it.

Thanks!

[Tonea Morrow]

Okay, here's the problem.

I have one set of pages for PDF and print. But, for online help I have an additional copy of the entire site. The copy has no graphics. Instead, every place where graphics had been used has been replaced with a complete text description of what the viewer would have seen. This makes the copy comparable to having the "audio description" turn on for your favorite TV show.

I have all the pages of the PDF, Print, and online (with graphics) under one introduction page. It is titled: Introduction<IFNOT PDF,PRINT>--Yes Graphics<END>

I have all the pages of text description under another introduction page. It is titled: Introduction--No Graphics

This works for an online system. The TOC on the left let's the user select whether they want to navigate withing the graphical or textual versions. But, I don't want the print and PDF versions to say Introduction--Yes Graphics when there is not a non-graphical version included. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Tonea

[Tim Green]

This works for an online system. The TOC on the left let's the user select whether they want to navigate withing the graphical or textual versions. But, I don't want the print and PDF versions to say Introduction--Yes Graphics when there is not a non-graphical version included. Any ideas?

You can have alternative TOC entries for the same topic in the TOC, one for PDF and one for your other content. The TOC is really just a list of links pointing to topic files, and it is quite possible to have more than one for the same topic, and each one can also have its own build option.

Select the current TOC entry, then select one of the options for creating a new topic. Then in the New Topic dialog, select the "TOC Link" option on the left and then the Link to a topic in this project option on the right. you can then choose the ID of the current topic. Then you edit the topic caption as you wish. After that you set the build options of one TOC entry to PDF, the other one to HTML or whatever you need for the other output. See this topic in the help for some more details on all this:

https://helpandmanual.com/help/index.ht ... ltiref.htm

[Tonea Morrow]

I'm not sure I understood your instructions. I created a second table of contents for the file, but couldn't specify which was for print and which was PDF. I exited without saving.

I reopened and created a second TOC entry of "Introduction--Yes Graphics"...I then renamed the topic under the TOC for the copy to be just Introduction. When I created the PDF, the name printed correctly, but none of the pages under it were printed. So, I had to make copies of the nested pages and put them under the copied Introduction. But now, I have a bunch of copies and worried that I would get confused as to:

• which were individuals (like I have 3 individual copies of one page whose name is the same, but the content varies depending on the output)
• and which were copies (the same file listed in the TOC multiple times)

I thought about how to track it and it seemed insane. So, again I exited without saving.

I reopened and created a second copy of the table of contents (just as before), but this time I saved the name as PDF Table of Contents. I should be able to fix that in the PDF skin so it just reads as Table of Contents. Now I have a plain TOC with all the electronic support files. And, I have a PDF Table of Contents that lacks the text description files. It is just the PDF/Print unique files and a copy of the approriate files from the electronic version. These copies I can track by making a comment in my "Writer's Comments" page that doesn't print in anything. And, I'll color code the duplicates for clarity. Of course, in the PDF TOC, I changed the copy's name from "Introduction--Yes Graphics" to just Introduction.

I think this works. We'll see.

Tonea

[Tim Green]

Hi Tonea,

Using a second TOC is also a way to approach this -- then you have different titles for everything. That is also the best solution if you have a lot of TOC entries that need to be changed. My suggestion was for if you only have a couple of topics with this requirement. Then you can have more than one TOC entry for the same topic in the same TOC, with different titles. But that can get difficult to manage if there are a lot of them, of course...

I reopened and created a second TOC entry of "Introduction--Yes Graphics"...I then renamed the topic under the TOC for the copy to be just Introduction. When I created the PDF, the name printed correctly, but none of the pages under it were printed.

That is one of the limitations of making second entries in the same TOC. They are really individual entries, and if you do it with chapter entries then you also need to make second entries (NOT copies of the entire topics!) for all the sub-topics that you want to have as well. In this case, it is really better to create a second TOC. That will be a lot easier to manage.

[Tonea Morrow]

When I ran the PDF, I selected PDF Table of Contents and used my skin without worrying yet about changes to it. All of the page reference icons are there in the PDF, but the entries are blank. It is just the icon with no page number inside it.

Any ideas?

Tonea

[Tim Green]

When I ran the PDF, I selected PDF Table of Contents and used my skin without worrying yet about changes to it. All of the page reference icons are there in the PDF, but the entries are blank. It is just the icon with no page number inside it.

Hmm... since you're using your own terminology here I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. What do you mean by "page reference icons in PDF"? And what are the "entries"?

[Tonea Morrow]

Help & Manual, PDF Layout Options:

Insert page referrers: Inserts a small icon containing the link target page number after every hyperlink. Recommended for PDFs designed for printing. You can choose from a number of different referrer icon styles. Try them out and see which one you like best!

Instead of page referrers, I say page reference. I don't think it's a big difference, but I understand your abundance of caution.

It inserts the icon, but the page number is missing in each and every location throughout the document. I did try to select the page number within the icon on the hopes that it was present but was somehow set to white and thus invisilbe. However, this did not work. It seems to be just the icon.

BlankReferrer.png

Tonea

[Tim Green]

Hi Tonea,

Please mail a sample project with which we can reproduce this and the .mnl PDF template you are using to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll check it for you. Something really screwy must have happened here for this to occur.