Glossary

[accuRaine]

I am not sure if you have this already.

I would like there to be an automatic way to have all field definitions print out using Print Manual (siimilar to a glossary).

Topic links (however small) have to appear on it's own page unless I set it compressed & then the entire Manual is all crunched up.

Maybe there can be a way to customize each Part of the Design Print Manual to have certain sections compressed & not the entire Manual.

Thanks.

[Tim Green]

Ermm...could you explain what you want in a little more detail? I'm afraid I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about...

I would like there to be an automatic way to have all field definitions print out using Print Manual (siimilar to a glossary).

What field definitions?? There are no field definitions in Help & Manual... I have a kind of feeling that you might be talking about the Print Manual Designer, but here too I have no idea what you might be referring to.

Topic links (however small) have to appear on it's own page unless I set it compressed & then the entire Manual is all crunched up.

Topic links are normally just colored or underlined text in your topics. How should they be on their own pages? Here too, I have a feeling that you're talking about something different. Please explain.

Maybe there can be a way to customize each Part of the Design Print Manual to have certain sections compressed & not the entire Manual.

Here too, no idea what you are referring to. What do you mean by "compressed"??? And why would you want to "compress" a section of the manual???

When posting questions about H&M please remember that it is a multi-output application. It can generate WinHelp, HTML Help, HTML, MMHelp, RTF, PDF and Print Manuals, and what you can do differs very widely depending on the kind of output you are generating. Please always refer to the kind of output you are generating.

[accuRaine]

Field Definitions aka Help Text (Topic + Help Text) I'd like them to be printed in a list (on one page) when I compile a Print Manual Build. Example: Field Definition Book, child A-Z Books, child topics within each these Books.

When using Print Manual: each one of the Topics within these books are printing out as 1 page per topic. I would rather that these particular Book 'Field Definitions' section be printed out as a list showing the Topic & help text. I do not want only 3 lines of text to 1 page - it looks bare in that Book Section when printed.

In the Print Manual Designer the are the following:
Cover page
Title Page 1-3
TOC
Foreward
Topic Level Intro
Topics
Endnotes
Keyword
Endnotes
Back Cover

Which one of these can be used to list the Topic + Help Text from Print Manual Designer?
Can I create a new Section Page in the Print Manual Designer?

Hope this explains it better

[Tim Green]

Hope this explains it better

Sorry, but it doesn't. I think it's because you're using your own personal terminology without defining it, which makes communication a little difficult. For example, I have no idea at all what you mean by "Field Definitions aka Help Text (Topic + Help Text)", or what the "them" are that you would like to print in a list on one page. It's also rather unclear what you are talking about when you refer to "books".

However, I would hazarad a guess that by "books" you mean chapters in the TOC (Table of Contents) in the H&M editor.

It sounds like you might be saying that each of the topics in your chapters actually has very little information in it (if that is what you mean by field definitions), and you would like the individual topics to be run together without page breaks in the printed manual or PDF output. (Although you don't say so I assume that you are talking about printed manuals and PDF because you refer to "Print Manual:")

Whatever your topics contain, you can control where page breaks occur with the Page Break options in the Page Options dialog for the Topics section of the Print Manual Designer.

To access these options open the Print Manual Designer with the template you are using for your project. To set the template select Project / Project Properties / Adobe PDF Export / PDF Layout and select the appropriate template in the Print Manual Template: field at the top of the dialog box. (The Print Manual Designer templates are applied to both printouts and Adobe PDF, they both use the PDF format.)

You can open the Print Manual Designer with the selected template directly from this dialog box by clicking on the Design... button to the right of the template selection field. Alternatively you can also open the designer with Tools / Print Manual Designer, but there you must also actively select the template you want to edit, it doesn't automatically select the template you are using in your current project.

Once you have opened the template in the Print Manual Designer select the "Topics" section in the drop-down list just left of center in the toolbar. Then select "Edit Properties" in the Edit menu (or click on the Edit Properties tool to the right of the drop-down list in the toolbar). This will display the Page Options for [Topics] dialog box.

Then click on the This Section Only tab. At the bottom of this tab you will see a list with three headings (Band / Height / Page Break). The settings in the Page Break column of this list enable you to control where page breaks happen.

You can select None, New Page and New Odd Page. If you select None for all the Bands, from Top Level Heading all the way down to Topic Text, then there will be no page breaks at all. All new topics will then be printed directly beneath the previous topic, if there is space for it.

Similarly, you can choose which levels of headings generate a page break, and whether the new page starts on the next available page no matter whether it is even or odd (New Page), or always with an odd page so that the new page is always on the right (New Odd Page).

The "levels" of the headings refer to the nesting levels of your topics and chapters in your TOC. The titles/headlines of top-level chapters with no chapters above them are "Top Level Headings". One topic or chapter below that is Level 2, one level below that is Level 3, and so on.

Here's a simple example. Suppose you have:

Code: Select all

CHAPTER 1
     Topic 1.1
     Topic 1.2
     Topic 1.3
CHAPTER 2
     Topic 2.1
     Topic 2.2
     Topic 2.3

In this simple structure the CHAPTERs would be Top Level Headings, and the Topics would be Level 2 Headings. If you set the Top Level Heading page break setting to New Page or New Odd Page and the Level 2 page break setting to None your printout will start a new page before CHAPTER 2, but all the Topics (1.1 ff and 2.1 ff) will be printed directly after one another, without page breaks.

If there are any Level 2 topics where you want page breaks after making these settings you must insert the breaks manually at the end of the topic in H&M, by moving the cursor to the end of the topic and selecting Insert / Manual Page Break. (By the way, when you want a break at the end of a topic it is sometimes necessary to insert two manual page breaks directly after one another to make this work. Check it with Print Preview and if you don't see a break in the right place just insert a second one, then it should work.)

The headers will still be printed above the contents of each topic, even without the page breaks, of course. If you want to suppress this too you must edit the Print Manual template and remove the appropriate heading variables -- for the example this would be <HEADING2>.

[John Smith]

Just a further guess but I think you are talking about the BOOK ICONS - being the Book, then child books and then topics.

If that is the case, we refer to them as Headings or Topics

Top Level Heading or Topic (Chapter)
--Second Level Heading or Topic
----Third Level Heading or Topic
------etc down to level 6.

and Tim's explanation above should help with page breaks.

Here is a little note on the all items in designer mode

Cover page - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
Title Page 1-3 - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
TOC - (Table of Contents) lists all Headings or Topic headings, but does not include any of the Help text
Foreward - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
Topic Level Intro- Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
Topics Displays the TOC heading and any help text as entered.
Endnotes - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
Keyword - Picks up all the Keywords as entered under Topic Options.
Endnotes - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.
Back Cover - Does not relate to headings or help text. Edited directly in Manual Design mode.

The TOC, Topics, and Keywords are the only pages that pick up data from your help project. The others are irrelevant unless you want to make your manual a little fancier with images and foreword/introduction information.

John

[accuRaine]

Thank you soooo very much both of you.

Tim I greatly appreciate your patience. Sorry for the initial confusion.

Your replies definitely helped me out greatly. This is exactly what I was referring to. Topic level 4 now has none for page break in the print manual designer and it work out perfectly

Thank You!!!

[Tim Green]

You're welcome! I know that programs like this can be rather overwhelming when you're just getting into them because of all the different possibilities.