Publishing both PDF and Webhelp from Merged Project File

[igallagher]

Hi

I have 3 separate docs for the same product that I have been publishing as PDFs from their own independent source files. I am changing this to make all three docs available as a merged Webhelp file, accessible online. However, I also need to still make the PDFs available in their original format - 3 separate PDFs. Is it possible to configure the merged project to publish the Webhelp file, and the 3 PDFs in one publish task, and be able to retain the original layout of the PDFs?

I have merged the three docs so that they will appear in the navigation menu on the Webhelp as follows:

- Doc1
- Doc2
- Doc3

---Doc 1 intro in original PDF moved to top level. This level not included in Webhelp publish. But I want to publish at this level in PDF.

Which means that now when I publish the PDFs, all the topics are subtopics of "Doc1", "Doc2", etc. Also, things like the title are not being picked up for the PDF from the original file - seems to be using the merged file title.

I hope this makes sense!

Thanks in advance

Irina

[Tim Green]

Hi Irina,

You can't publish the individual child PDFs from the master PDF, because that creates a merged document by definition. However, the child projects continue to be separate projects and you can publish them to PDF on their own. If you want to do this all in one operation you will need to use command line publishing and create a batch file with individual command lines for each project: one for the master file and then one each for each of the child files to be publishing to PDF on their own. You can't do this with the publishing task manager, because tasks are project related and can only perform multiple operations on the current project. What you need here is a way to publish multiple projects at the same time.

See this chapter in the help for instructions on how to use command line publishing and create batches for it:

http://helpandmanual.com/help/index.htm ... ndline.htm

[igallagher]

Thanks Tim, I was coming to that conclusion, and had started to look into it.

Cheers
Irina