Topic order in Toc not reflected in PDF

[Dave1975]

Hello,

For my printed output in a project I am using a seperate TOC. Heading levels are determined within the topics by styles instead of by TOC depth.

Under 1 entry in that TOC I had about 10 sub-entries. All subentries are linked to bookmarks in one topic file (import legacy from FM). In that topic file those subentries appear as seperate paragraphs with a heading 3 and each one explains the specs of a single component of a machine.

As 5 of those components will be used by a colleague in her own TOC for a similar machine, I decided it would be a good idea to take the paragraphs out of the legacy topic and create new topics so both TOC's can link to those same shared topics.

I tested with one to start with. The change went fine, but when I built the output, the order of the paragraphs in the PDF changed. The paragraph for which I created a new topic now appears at the end of the chapter instead of in the middle where the original paragraph was located. It's no big deal in this case but I could run into problems in chapters where the order of the paragraphs does matter.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

For reference I have attached a screenshot of my TOC in which the order is visible and one of the output of in PDF (PDF TOC).

thanks

grtz

David

[devjoe]

It looks like the other topics which that topic is between in the TOC are bookmarks to sections of the big original topic.

TOC entries to bookmarks are ignored in PDF output. The main entry to the big topic, without a bookmark, appears somewhere earlier in your TOC, and this is causing the entirety of that topic to get included in your TOC. The TOC entry for your new topic then puts that one in the PDF while the other references to the big topic are ignored.

When you separate out all the bookmarked subtopics into separate topics in your TOC, then things will appear how you expect.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Quick suggestion - would snippets work for you?

[Dave1975]

@Devjoe: right, I didn't know that. Ran some more tests and they confirmed your theory. The idea is to get rid of the large topics and the bookmarks anyway and link directly to smaller topics, so the fact that Flare works this way is not a problem.

@ChoccieMuffin: I did play around with snippets a bit a while ago when I was still using the trial version of Flare but to my understanding they should actually be used for pieces of information that you want to reuse in other locations? Running the project in Analyzer does suggest to create a number of Snippets but I haven't invested any further time in this concept up til now. Maybe you can advise on whether to use it if I give you some background info:

Situation: 3 different machine platforms (let's say A, B and C). On each platform we have a number of different machine types (let's say A1, A2, A3,...). The differences between the platforms are major, the differences between the types within a platform are minor.

Targets: mainly 3 PDF operator manual targets (1 per platform) and 3 online help systems HTML5 (1 per platform).

Set up Flare: 1 TOC per PDF (3 in total) and 1 TOC per online help (3 in total). We have conditions "print vs online" and we will also have conditions differentiating between the types within one platform. So basically the difference between the platforms is purely done via the TOC because otherwise we fear to end up with too many conditions. Downside is that you loose a part of the Single Sourcing as we will have e.g. two topics to describe a motor (1 for platform A and 1 for platform B) whereas we only might have a very small difference between the motors. Using a condition we might keep 1 topic. We are still early in the project, so using conditions is still an option.

Can snippets be of help here?

thank you both for your input.

best regards

David

[ChoccieMuffin]

@Devjoe: right, I didn't know that. Ran some more tests and they confirmed your theory. The idea is to get rid of the large topics and the bookmarks anyway and link directly to smaller topics, so the fact that Flare works this way is not a problem.

@ChoccieMuffin: I did play around with snippets a bit a while ago when I was still using the trial version of Flare but to my understanding they should actually be used for pieces of information that you want to reuse in other locations? Running the project in Analyzer does suggest to create a number of Snippets but I haven't invested any further time in this concept up til now. Maybe you can advise on whether to use it if I give you some background info:

Situation: 3 different machine platforms (let's say A, B and C). On each platform we have a number of different machine types (let's say A1, A2, A3,...). The differences between the platforms are major, the differences between the types within a platform are minor.

Targets: mainly 3 PDF operator manual targets (1 per platform) and 3 online help systems HTML5 (1 per platform).

Set up Flare: 1 TOC per PDF (3 in total) and 1 TOC per online help (3 in total). We have conditions "print vs online" and we will also have conditions differentiating between the types within one platform. So basically the difference between the platforms is purely done via the TOC because otherwise we fear to end up with too many conditions. Downside is that you loose a part of the Single Sourcing as we will have e.g. two topics to describe a motor (1 for platform A and 1 for platform B) whereas we only might have a very small difference between the motors. Using a condition we might keep 1 topic. We are still early in the project, so using conditions is still an option.

Can snippets be of help here?

thank you both for your input.

best regards

David

I suggest this approach.

Say you have a teasmade feature which is used in all three platforms.

* Create a topic for each platform and include the relevant topic in the TOC for each platform.
* Create a single snippet for the teasmade feature. (I keep all my snippets in a "Snippets" sub-folder in Content Explorer so I can find them easily.)
* Create a condition tag set for your snippet conditions and in that set create snippet.platform1, snippet.platform2 and snippet.platform3.
* In your snippet, apply these conditions to the appropriate bits.
* Add the snippet to each of the three topics.
* In each topic, right-click the inserted snippet and on the menu click Snippet Conditions.
* In the topic for platform 1, EXclude the snippet conditions snippet.platform2 and snippet.platform3. If you've applied more than one condition to some bits in your snippet you might need to also INclude snippet.platform1.
* Do similar in the topics for platform 2 and platform 3.

That should do the trick.

[Dave1975]

Thanks for the reply, I have been away for a while, hence my late answer.

I need to try out your suggestion to fully understand how it works, will post back with my results.

grtz

David