Expanded text variables

[Pete Maclean]

I use H&M to produce help files for a product that is sold in three different editions. This means producing three different versions of the help file. Probably 70% of the material is common to all versions while 30% is version-specific.

H&M's Include Options, User Defined 1, 2 and 3, serve well in enabling me to generate the three help-file editions using a single project. (Lucky I don't need more than 3, eh!) However, in a few cases, I have topics in which only one word differs between the three editions. Currently, for each case, I have to keep three copies of essentially the same topic with just that one word varying.

What I would prefer to do is use user-defined text variables in some kind of conditional or indexed way. The best way I can come up with to do this as things stand would be to manually edit the text variables (I would need only three or four) each time I generate a different version. I suspect I would often forget though and think it's less trouble just to do as I described above.

So, I will pose the question (just in case!): is there an automatic way to do what I want in H&M now? If not, could some such mechanism be added?

[Tim Green]

Pete:

You can do this easily with the Conditional Text feature. Just select Insert / Conditional Text... You will get a dialog for the trigger condition, which can be IF or IFNOT. The condition can be either the output type OR a user-defined condition, which allows you to output different versions within the same output type. Since there are three user-defined variables you can (just) create your three versions (whew...).

Then click on OK, move the cursor to the end of the text to be inserted in the editing window, select Insert / Conditional Text... again and add the ENDIF marker.

The text included between IF and ENDIF will then only be generated when the condition is fulfilled. You activate the User-Defined conditions at compile time by selecting the Options button in the Make Help File and Run dialog.

Personally, I have often thought it would probably be a good idea to be able to have more than three user-defined conditions...

[Alexander Halser]

What I would prefer to do is use user-defined text variables in some kind of conditional or indexed way

If you start Help & Manual with command line parameters for batch compilation, you can supply a variable list (a simple text file) that temporarily replaces the values of the text variables in your help project. See online help, keyword Command line options for details.

Since you are producing 3 versions of your help, a batch that does it automatically seems to be highly appropriate. You could accomplish this with a simple batch file, but if you have different setups to compile as well, an automation tool would be helpful.

We use FinalBuilder (http://www.atozedsoftware.com) to automate the entire build process. FinalBuilder explicitely supports Help & Manual. It compiles separate evaluation versions of Help & Manual and Impict, rebuilds the online help, PDF manuals, browser based help, recreates three different setup packages and finally updates the image files for CD roms. All that on a mouse click. I cannot imagine to live without it.

Another recommended tool is Visual Build from Kinook Software (http://www.kinook.com) which works quite similar and also supports the batch compilation of Help & Manual.

[Pete Maclean]

Tim, Thank you for your response. I had missed the Conditional Text feature and appreciate your bringing it to my attention. It does not however give me the kind of solution I really want. It muddies up the source, especially when there are multiple conditional-text instances within a topic. And, most fortunately, there is a better way....

Alexander, Thank you for enlightening me about command-line options. They are the answer to my prayers! I like doing such things in a batch mode and have now set up an INI file that takes care of my entire build. The ability to overload text variables is the gem!

There is just one little enhancement I would wish for, an ability to specify /I parameters in hex. That would make setting them a less errorprone procedure and much easier when combining options.

I have long been impressed by H&M as a product and now I am most delighted with the help I have received too.

[Alexander Halser]

There is just one little enhancement I would wish for, an ability to specify /I parameters in hex.

You can actually do that, it works with hex numbers, too.
But for non-programmers, decimal numbers are easier to deal with.

Hex <> Decimal

/I=0x04......../I=4 (HTML Help)
/I=0x08......../I=8 (Winhelp)
/I=0x10......../I=16 (browser based help)
/I=0x20......../I=32 (print manual)
/I=0x20......../I=64 (PDF)
/I=0x80......../I=128 (MMHelp)
/I=0x2000...../I=8192 (Demo)
/I=0x4000...../I=16384 (User 1)
/I=0x8000...../I=32768 (User 2)
/I=0x10000.../I=65536 (User 3)

etc.