is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple TOCs

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simon harris
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is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple TOCs

Unread post by simon harris »

Hi everyone,

I have a project that has about 450 topics - each topic contains a drawing.
I need to translate the TOC into 8+ languages.
I created a topic for each drawing as a container for the drawing file.
I created a language specific topic for each drawing that references the original topic containing the drawing as a snippet [this is to ensure i have a single instance of each drawing].

**the above works swimmingly for the original English TOC.

Now i need to replicate the entire TOC, say for French.

I tried duplicating the original TOC, which it does, however, the topics are still the original topics, so if i change the topic title to French, the English TOC entry gets changed. So, I need to make a new topic for French that links to the snippet. This is fine, except, there are 450 topics.

If i DO duplicate the TOC, then change the topic IDs, it takes H&M about 10 seconds [and getting longer] to update its internals for each topic - this is wicked when multiplied by 450.

Any suggestions on how i could handle this better?

GOAL: A single project handling multiple languages, all using single source [the drawings], where the TOCs are localised.

Thanks!!
All the best,
Simon
simon harris
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2018 1:35 am
Location: syd - AU

Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by simon harris »

to visually describe what silly games i am playing...
All the best,
Simon
simon harris
Posts: 30
Joined: Thu Jul 26, 2018 1:35 am
Location: syd - AU

Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by simon harris »

toc.png
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All the best,
Simon
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Tim Green
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Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Simon,

Don't try to include or manage multiple language versions in a single project. Just don't even consider it, unless you really enjoy pain, suffering and endless frustration. Always always always create a separate project for each language. There are countless reasons for this, but these items should be enough on their own:
  • Multiple languages with different character sets often won't work at all.
  • Managing translations for the individual languages becomes a nightmarishly complex exercise.
  • Your projects become unnecessarily bloated.
See the translation chapter in the documentation for an introduction to the various ways to do it:

https://helpandmanual.com/help/index.ht ... lating.htm
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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simon harris
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Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by simon harris »

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have translated before using separate projects. The ONLY reason I didn't do it here is that it is ONLY the TOC that requires translation - there is no "text" to translate in the topics themselves. I DO see your point though. I was attempting to be lazy and see if the multi-TOC option could do it for me and just have a single project that handles everything. There are more than 8 languages [and growing], so you can perhaps understand my desire to keep the whole shebang together.

My problem [well, just this one] would dissolve if I could be able to use some kind of variable text that would transfer into the output PDF TOC. I think I asked about that before, but it does not seem to be viable.

Thanks again.
All the best,
Simon
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Tim Green
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Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by Tim Green »

simon harris wrote:Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have translated before using separate projects. The ONLY reason I didn't do it here is that it is ONLY the TOC that requires translation - there is no "text" to translate in the topics themselves..
Ah, that wasn't clear. That should work then, provided that the character sets you are using will all display correctly within a single project. That will work without any issues for Latin-based languages, but you would have problems with others, like Asian languages, Russian and some Eastern European languages, which require different charset settings.
I DO see your point though. I was attempting to be lazy and see if the multi-TOC option could do it for me and just have a single project that handles everything. There are more than 8 languages [and growing], so you can perhaps understand my desire to keep the whole shebang together.
Given that only the TOCs would change then you could have multiple copies of the main TOC in different languages, using the multiple TOCs feature. You would only need to translate the text parts of the XML files in the \Maps folder, which is where the TOCs are stored. The caveat is that this wouldn't change the titles of the topics, since that text is in the topic files. However, there is also a solution for that as well, which might solve the whole thing:

Instead of using multiple TOCs you could make multiple copies of the project, but only have the original topic content in the main/original copy. In all the others delete the content of each topic and insert the original version as a linked snippet with the From File option, inserting the original topic file from the \Topics folder of the original project (that needs to be stored uncompressed for this, which is better for ongoing work anyway). Then you can also have the topic headers in the project copies in the target languages.

This would also allow you to have the correct language and character sets configured in each project for the text in the TOC and topic headers. The only problem with this is that you would have font/character set issues if the reused content doesn't work with those fonts/character sets. However, you would have the same problem with the multiple TOC solution as well, so it's swings and roundabouts....
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Andreas Boettcher
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Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by Andreas Boettcher »

In addition to what Tim suggested, you could keep the content snippets/drawings in a language-neutral repository project and link the snippets from there. That way, you would have to insert the snippets only once in the primary source language project.
simon harris
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Re: is there a simpler way of doing this - massive multiple

Unread post by simon harris »

Thanks for your suggestions, gents. I think that I will end up with multi-copies and snippets as I can envisage character set problems down the track.
All the best,
Simon
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