Please follow modular project topic links in the Page Editor

[Simon Dismore]

In the Page Editor, the <control>+<click> technique is a very useful way for collaborating authors to navigate to a linked topic. However, it only works when the link target is a topic in the current help project. When the link is to a topic in another help project, <control>+<click>ing the link produces an alert message "This is a external link to: (topic) in file (projectfile)". When the message is dismissed, the Page Editor does not navigate to the target, even when the context is a modular "Merge content on publishing" project and both the topics come from projectfiles shown in H&M's modular TOC.

Tim has explained that there would be "knotty problems" supporting <control>+<click> navigation because H&M wouldn't know whether the target projectfile was open or even available at the time the link was clicked. I can imagine that would be difficult to handle in general.

However, in the specific case where the user is editing a modular "Merge content on publishing" project, H&M already knows the location and state of each of the linked modules and should be able to navigate between their topics, as if all the modules were stored in a single project file.

Please investigate how to follow topic links between modular projects. This will make it much more practical to divide a large project into manageable parts. Thanks for considering this,

Simon