Posts by MadCap Simon:

New settings for TOCs and Mini-TOCs in Flare V8

April 9th, 2012

There are a few new settings for TOCs and Mini-TOCs in Flare V8.  In this post we will go over these new style properties as well as outline some of the others that help define the look and feel of TOCs and Mini-TOCs.  This post will use the Mini-TOC as an example.

New Properties:

• mc-multiline-indent: This property gives you the ability to set the indent for entries that spans multiple lines.  The indent will not affect the first line but will be applied to any wrapped line. As you can see below it is applied to the p.MiniTOC2 class. This property is not set by default.
• mc-leader-indent: Allows you to control the distance from the end of the entry to the beginning of the leader. In the screenshot you can see it applied to the p.MiniTOC2 class.  It is not set by default.
• mc-pagenum-display: This property will give you the ability to show or hide page numbers, or to show them only when an entry has no subentries (“leaf” option). By default page numbers and leaders will be shown on all entries.  Below the property has been set to “leaf” on the p.MiniTOC1 class. As you can see all of the MiniTOC1 level entries (bold) have leaders and page numbers except for the one with sub-entries.

Another item addressed in Flare V8 is that page numbers associated with items that wrap are bottom aligned to match the leader.  You can also see this in the screenshot below.



Other properties:

There are two main styles for the MiniTOCs:

MadCap|miniTocProxy: This style is the ‘container’ style for the MiniTOC. You can set things on the ‘container’ like; the max ‘depth’ of entries to display, padding, borders, etc.

p.MiniTOC#: This class is numbered 1 – 9. The number correlates with the ‘depth’ of the Mini-TOC entries.  As you can see in the sample that only p.MiniTOC1 and MiniTOC2 were needed. These classes are used to fine tune each of the different entry levels.  You can set things like; font, margin, etc.  Settings on these classes will be applied over ones set in the MadCap|miniTocProxy.

The properties above can be used with the TOC but you will have to apply them to the TOC specific styles and classes, MadCap|tocProxy and p.TOC1 – 9.

For more information on what’s new in Flare V8, click here.

No Comments "

Index Settings in MadCap Flare V8

March 6th, 2012

In Flare V8 there were a few new settings added to the index as well as a ‘better’ default look out of the box.  In this post, we will outline the new index features as well as take a look at some of the existing styles that you can change in a print index.

The first thing that was done in Flare V8 is, by default, the index page numbers are now left aligned.  This is so that the default settings are more aligned with the industry standards. Two new styles were also added to the index:

• mc-reference-initial-separator: Allows for the setting of characters or spacing between the index term and the page numbers
• mc-multiline-indent: Allows an intent to be applied any line that wraps as a result of a long index keyword.

The last new feature added to the index is the ability to sort a keyword as something else. This can be useful when a keyword begins with a symbol or an accented variety of a letter.

Index Styles:

Below are the more common styles used in changing the appearance of an index.  What you see in the screenshot below are the defaults that Flare ships with, so you may not need to make any changes at all.



• MadCap|indexProxy: This is the ‘container’ style for the index. from here you can set things on the proxy such as border, margin padding, number of columns, whether or not you want heading letters, etc.  You can also set things that will affect all of the index terms, such as font, color, margins, separators, etc.
• p.IndexHeading: This class for p style is to fine tune the index heading (the letter that comes before each alphabetical section in the index.  You can set things like font, font size, color, text alignment.
• p.Index: This class increments by “1″ for every sub-keyword (p.index.1, p.index2, etc), as seen in the screenshot above.  This class gives you more control over each ‘level’ of keyword and will take precedence over anything set in the MadCap|indexProxy style. You can set things like font, font size, color, margins, mc-multiline-indent, etc.
• mc-reference-separator: This property can be set on the MadCap|indexProxy style or the p.Index class. It allows you to control the separator between the index pages. By default, they are set as”,”.
• mc-reference-initial-separator: This property is new in Flare V8, and it can be set on the MadCap|indexProxy style or the p.Index class. It allows you to control the characters or spaces between the index term and the page number.
• mc-multiline-indent: This property is also new in Flare V8.  It allows you to control the indent on keywords that are longer and wrap to more than one line.  The indent is not applied to the first line, it is applied to every ‘wrapped’ line in that term.

Index Sort As:

As mentioned above, this feature allows you to sort an index keyword as something else.

Let’s say you add <html> as an index keyword. Normally, without the “Sort As” feature, the keyword would be placed at the top of the index list, before the alphabetized keywords.  Now you can have <html> be sorted and appear in the index with the “H” terms.

This feature is part of the index link set functionality, which is used to create “See” and “See also” index links. Therefore, a new option is now available in the Properties dialog that opens from an index link set. Note: This feature is available in all output types.

Steps:

Create some index keywords in a project.

You can use your own project or use these quick steps to get a new project started and add some index keywords to it.

1. Create a new project in in Flare using the ‘Book Template‘ and selecting PDF as the output.
2. In the Content Explorer open the CH1a.htm topic from the CH1 folder
3. Go to the View Ribbon and select the Index Window
4. In the topic place the insertion point in the word “Heading2″ and press [F10]. This will create an index term for Heading2. Repeat this process with the words, “template”, “demonstrate”, “create”, and “Layouts”.
5. Save All. You will notice that the terms now appear in bottom of the Index Window.
   
6. Open any other topic (or just use the same one) and type “<html>” on a new line or in a paragraph.
7. Highlight “<html>” and press [F10]
8. Save All and notice that the <html> tag has been added to the Index Window

 Create an Index Link Set and add a ‘Sort As Link’

You can add an Index Link Set manually to your project, add one automatically or add to an existing one.  For this example we will have Flare automatically create one for us.

1. Right-click on the <html> keyword in the Index Window
   
2. Select “Edit Sort As” from the menu
3. The Add File dialog should appear with Index Link Set selected.  You can name the file or leave the default name.  If you were to do this for production, you would most likely want to name the file something descriptive.
4. Click Add
5. The Index Link Set editor will open up in the MDI with the Index Link dialog presented.  The dialog will already have the “<html>” keyword filled in as well as the link type set to “Sort As“.  All you have to do is type the keyword that you want <html> to be sorted as. In this example “html”.
   
6. Click OK and Save All
7. Optional: You may want to remove the line in the Index Link editor that you didn’t create.  It will cause a warning on compile. If you do, Save All after you are finished.
8. Now you can see the <html> keyword sorted in the Index Window.
   

Generate the output and view the results.

1. Go to the Project Ribbon and click Build Primary
2. View the result and go to the Index
   
3. Notice that <html> is now sorted as if it was “html”

No Comments "

Tweaking the Content Inside of Snippets Using Conditions

February 15th, 2012

Snippet conditions are condition tags that you can apply to content within snippets. With snippet conditions, you can separate certain snippet content so that it displays in some places but not in others. This allows you to use one snippet for many purposes, rather than having to create multiple snippets. Whereas regular conditions are included or excluded at the target level, snippet conditions are included or excluded at the topic or master page level.

Let’s say that you have a table that you use in several topics. Rather than adding that table manually to the topics, you create a snippet and add that snippet to all of the topics. Now suppose that you need a variation of the table in only a couple of the topics that the snippet is in. Simply apply conditions to certain rows in a snippet’s table and exclude them in the topic properties that you do not want the content to display in.

How to set it up:

To set this up we will need to create a couple of topics, a couple of conditions, and a snippet, and then put them together.

Creating the project and topics:

1. Create a new Flare project using the “Empty” template and select WebHelp as the target type.
2. Press [ctrl]+[t] to create a topic and name it Letters.  Press [ctrl]+[t] again to create a second topics and name it Numbers.
3. Open the Master TOC (View > Open Master TOC) and add these two topics to it by dragging them into it.
4. Save All
   

Creating conditions:

1. Go to the Project Organizer and open the Conditional Text folder
2. Double-click to open “Default” in the Conditional TagSet Editor
3. At this point you can create two new conditions or rename the existing ones, since they are not used in this project. Either create or rename the existing conditions to “Letters” and “Numbers”.  If you want select new colors for them.
4. Save All
   

 Creating a snippet and adding it to each topic: 

1. Create a snippet: Project > Add Snippet…
2. In the snippet delete everything and add a table with at least two rows and content in each one.
   
3. In the block bar, right-click on a table row (tr) and select Conditions…
   
4. Apply the conditional tag “Letters” to the rows with letters and the conditional tag “Numbers” to the rows with numbers. If you have condtional indicators turned ‘on’ (View > Show > Show Conditional Indicators) you should see the table appear in the editor like this:
   
5. Now just open the two topics (“Letters” and “Numbers”) in the editor and add the snippet to each one: Insert > Snippet…

Setting the Snippet Condition on each topic:

1. In the Content Explorer, right-click on the “Numbers” topic and select Properties…
2. In the Properties dialog, click the Snippet Conditions tab and set the Default.Letters tag to Exclude.
   
3. Now do the same thing for the “Letters” topic, but this time you will be excluding the Default.Numbers tag.
4. Save All
5. Open each topic in the editor.  Notice that the corresponding rows are gone from the editor.  Note: If your table seems to have a background color, remember that we turned ‘on’ the conditional tag indicators in a previous step, just turn them ‘off’ again (View > Show > Show Conditional Indicators).
6. Build and view the output to see that the content is removed appropriately.

For more information on snippet conditions go to Flare’s Online Help: http://madcap.us/j6COY9

To download the sample project, click here: Snippet Condition Sample Project

No Comments "

WebHelp Mobile as a Mobile Performance Support Application

February 9th, 2012

Nad Rosenberg (President, TechWRITE, Inc) recently challenged us by asking if we had a way of converting our WebHelp Mobile output to a Mobile Performance Support Application. After a brief conversation and a couple mock ups, we found a way to easily post process our WebHelp Mobile to fit the bill.

A performance support application provides the information people turn to on the job when they’re unsure about what to do, need reminders, or they’re looking for a solution to a problem.

Flare’s WebHelp Mobile output is a good solution because it comes with the coding needed to fit different types of mobile devices AND it includes SEARCH (which if you create a do-it-yourself mobile performance support application, you have to spend a lot of time, money and/or energy to get a search service working). Flare gives this to you “out-of-the-box.”

Our WebHelp Mobile provided most of the solution, but needed the TOC to be the default page in the application. Below are the steps to accomplish this.

Create and Set Up a Mobile Target and Skin

The first part of the process is to create a Mobile target and skin, then set them up.

1. Create a Mobile target and skin
2. Open the skin and go to the General tab
3. In the Caption section, type the name of your application
4. In the Features section, select the TOC and the Search option (Note: The search option is optional).
   
5. Save All

Generate and Post Process the Output

The next part of the process is to copy the advanced folder from the output to a new location then edit one of the files. The advanced folder contains the WebHelp Mobile output for newer devices(at the time WebHelp Mobile was released).  Most devices should already be using the advanced folder behind the scenes.

1. In the copied folder open the Resources folder
   
2. Open the Toc_0.htm file in notepad
3. Select the <ul> and everything down to and including the </ul>
4. Copy the selected content and close notepad
5. Go “up” a directory
6. Open the Default.htm file in notepad
   
7. Select the <ul> and everything down to and including the </ul>
8. Paste the content from the clipboard, overwriting the existing content
9. Save
10. Press [ctrl]+[h] on the keyboard to open the find and replace dialog
11. Find ../ and replace with nothing, leave the field blank
12. Replace All
13. Find Toc and replace with Resources/Toc
14. Replace All
1. Note: This is case sensitive so notice what case your “Resources” folder is and match it here
15. Save
16. Close notepad
17. Open the Default.htm in your browser to test the links
18. Copy or FTP the files and folders to the desired location

Notes:

• If you named the output file in the target you will not have a “Default.htm” file in your output folder, just edit the .htm file in the folder, it should be the only one there.
  
• If you have to support older phones, you will have to copy the full output folder structure (not just the ‘advanced’ folder) and do these steps for both folders.

About Nad Rosenberg:

• Before starting TechWRITE in 1985, Nad managed documentation departments for several large corporations. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, an Associate Fellow at the Society for Technical Communication, on the Board of Directors of the Plain Language Association InterNational, and a Past President of the Philadelphia Metro Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. You can contact Nad at twnad@techw.com or 856-848-6593.

 

1 Comment "

Tips and Tricks: Different Icons for Different Pages in a WebHelp TOC

January 19th, 2012

We have had a couple of requests from folks asking how to change a handful of books or pages in a WebHelp TOC.  The reason for this is that they want a different icon displayed when linking to multimedia, PDF files, spread sheets, etc. To do this all you have to do is create a style class for the TOCEntry Style in the skin.

Before you begin it would be good to get the different icons that you may need.  They should be around 16 px x 16 px unless you want to change the line height of the TOC items.

Steps:

1. Create a style class in the active WebHelp skin

•  Open the skin that you use for WebHelp from the Project Organizer (Project Organizer | Skins | Double-click).
• Click on the Styles Tab and then right-click on the TOCEntry Style.
  
• Select Add Class from the UI and name the class.  In this sample we created two styles, one named PDF and one XLS.
  
• Select one of the classes that you just created and open the TocIcons Property Group.
• You will see the property TocIcon.  Click the drop-down and then browse for the image that you want to use for this file type.
  
• Do the same for the other class that you created.
• Save all.

2. Apply the style to the desired TOC items

• Open the TOC that you want to edit (Project Organizer | TOC | Double-click the TOC that you want to open).
• Right-click on the TOC Page that you want to change and select Properties.
  
• On the General Tab, select the one of the classes that you just created and click OK
  
• Save all

Note: You will not see the changed icons in the TOC editor in Flare.  Once you compile the help you will see the changes.

3. Build and View the output

All that is left to do is to build the WebHelp output that uses the TOC and skin that you set up.



 

No Comments "