TOC: Highlighter or separator

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Dave Gehman
Posts: 575
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2017 9:05 pm

TOC: Highlighter or separator

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Situation:
We have a help file with 3 major divisions:
  1. self-guided training
  2. concepts
  3. technical reference
The wish:
It would be great if we could (a) highlight the beginning of each section with a rubric/title in a contrasting background or text color, or (b) provide each with a separator, say via a non-content TOC object similar to a laser line or color bar.

Martin Wynne created a standalone TOC-modifier exe that we capable of the highlighting, but unfortunately it won't work with the V3 & V4 skins, found at https://helpman.it-authoring.com/viewto ... 374#p65294

It also had to be run after each Publish, though it was a great little app. Having the capability built into H+M would give us something we could set and forget.

(Martin's app also gave us the ability to add a tooltip to TOC entries... a VERY useful add-on.)
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Tim Green
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Re: TOC: Highlighter or separator

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Dave,
It would be great if we could (a) highlight the beginning of each section with a rubric/title in a contrasting background or text color, or (b) provide each with a separator, say via a non-content TOC object similar to a laser line or color bar.
That won't work with the dynamic TOC, which doesn't exist anywhere as HTML. It's generated on the fly from the compressed JSON version stored in the js folder that only contains the data, and the hidden branches aren't generated at all until they're displayed. So there is no HTML to modify and the JSON couldn't be modified without changing the TOC building scripts as well.
Martin's app also gave us the ability to add a tooltip to TOC entries... a VERY useful add-on.
Same issue there. That can't be changed without changing the JSON generated by HM from the TOC in the project. And the output data is kept as minimal as possible to keep loading times down.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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