Flare 2017 r2: Mini-toc proxy stopped working

[andnog]

I have just updated to 2017 r2, and suddenly all my HTML5 outputs show empty mini-toc links. I have tested this on three different projects, all with the same result. Went back to Flare 11 and it all works fine.
We use mini-toc proxies on the book level in our TOCs, so this is not good! It seems like we have to use an older version of Flare from now on. I know this also worked in Flare 2017, but r2 has replaced that version.
Has anyone else experienced this?

[NorthEast]

Report it as a bug.

I don't use mini-TOCs, but TOCs in general seem to be fairly broken in 2017r2:

* 2017 R2 broke all of my TOCs
* Menu proxy issues in 2017r2

[Liz_G]

Looks like it's all sorts of links - hyperlinks and cross refs are also broken. I've uninstalled r2 and gone back to 2017 r1.

[NorthEast]

Looks like it's all sorts of links - hyperlinks and cross refs are also broken. I've uninstalled r2 and gone back to 2017 r1.

Same for me too.

I tried to insert a cross-reference, and I found that I couldn't initially see any of the topics.
I selected the Topic Files (*.htm...) filter at the top, and then I could then see the topics. Topic files was already selected, but re-selecting it seemed to fix the issue.

That's pretty bad though - really unimpressed with bugs in 2017r2 so far.

[andnog]

Looks like it's all sorts of links - hyperlinks and cross refs are also broken. I've uninstalled r2 and gone back to 2017 r1.

You should report that as well. Did you have trouble with all hyperlinks and xrefs, or is it random?
I couldn't find any issues with hyperlinks and xrefs in my output, but I have only tested a few topics so far.

The mini-toc problem has been reported anyway.

[NorthEast]

You should report that as well. Did you have trouble with all hyperlinks and xrefs, or is it random?
I couldn't find any issues with hyperlinks and xrefs in my output, but I have only tested a few topics so far.

The mini-toc problem has been reported anyway.

The insert xref window didn't initially show any topics in the browser, meaning you couldn't insert an xref.
After I re-selected the Topic Files filter, they appeared in the browser. It seems to have fixed it permanently now, or at least I can't get it to revert back.

Might be submitting quite a lot of bugs at this rate!

[Jess77]

Yes! I use mini-TOCs in the exact same way and they are all broken too.

When you uninstall Flare R2, do you have to do anything additional to the registry? To remove everything?

EDIT: I answered my own question by searching my archived email:

After uninstalling via the Windows Control Panel please do the following:
1. With hidden files and folders turned on, open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:>Program Files(x86)>MadCap Software
2. Delete the MadCap Flare 12 Folder
3. Next, still in Windows explorer, navigate to C:>Users>(your username)>AppData>Roaming>MadCap Software
4. Delete the Flare Folder
5. Then in the start menu search bar type regedit and open regedit.exe
6. In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software
7. Delete the Madcap Software folder
8. Now reinstall Flare

I hope this helps!

[chrispitude]

Mini-TOCs broken for us too.

[katrinabmg]

They are broken for me as well in HTML5 output, but were fine in chm ouput.
Based on some debugging in the browser, I am checking to see if removing blue system generated TOC titles are the problem, http://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/2017 ... lare-2017/

If that doesn't work I will go back to an earlier version.

EDIT: Removing the title variables in the main TOC fixed the mini-tocs for me.
From the related threads on menu proxys it sounds like title variables might be causing problems in lots of places like menu proxy, cross references, etc. I might miss those errors in my output, because there aren't many, but for now I haven't had to uninstall r2 yet.

[Dkadilak62263]

Anyone still having issues with the mini tocs rendering in the Flare 2017 r2 update madcap released a few days ago? Our issue = proxy TOCs & breadcrumbs are mostly all missing in my output. After I refresh, they appear.

[andnog]

Yes! I use mini-TOCs in the exact same way and they are all broken too.

When you uninstall Flare R2, do you have to do anything additional to the registry? To remove everything?

EDIT: I answered my own question by searching my archived email:

After uninstalling via the Windows Control Panel please do the following:
1. With hidden files and folders turned on, open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:>Program Files(x86)>MadCap Software
2. Delete the MadCap Flare 12 Folder
3. Next, still in Windows explorer, navigate to C:>Users>(your username)>AppData>Roaming>MadCap Software
4. Delete the Flare Folder
5. Then in the start menu search bar type regedit and open regedit.exe
6. In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software
7. Delete the Madcap Software folder
8. Now reinstall Flare

I hope this helps!

Since you use the mini-toc proxy the same way as I do, do you still have this issue when using 2017 r2? Because I do. Even with the latest build 6355 I still have the exact same problem as I reported initially. Until now I have used the first version of 2017, which works fine. In one of my small projects I have tried to fix the problem by re-entering the mini-toc proxies and also removed the system variables that were used on some of the toc entries. Nothing helps!

If you came up with a solution, I would be very happy if you can post it here.

*Update: I found a workaround from MadCap support connected to the bug report I posted for this.
In our case we have an additional style class for the mini-toc proxy to make it look nicer and work better together with the content. This class had a property for the mc-toc-depth set to 0. If I change this value to 1 in the stylesheet, it will solve the problem for all my mini-tocs in one go. Apparently earlier versions of Flare didn't care about this setting. So why this behavior has been changed in 2017 r2, I have no clue. I will ask the support for more detailed explanation. At least my problem is solved for now.

[snippygirl]

This has been frustrating us for some time, and we've gone back to v11.

Support said this after we opened a bug:

"Starting in Flare 2017 r2, MadCap upgraded the version of Foundation that is being used. In order to move our products forward, we need to make changes to our output files. The changes made in Flare 2017 r2 are to address the ability to use topics in multiple places in a TOC and have the system remember where the user is in a Book, Breadcrumbs, MiniTOC, and Menu proxies. This also allows Flare projects and outputs to scale and will be built on in future releases.

"Flare 2017 r2 handles navigation items differently from previous versions. In the past, all navigation links were static and created during compile. Now, all navigation items are created dynamically via a script. We have had a few cases in which scripts that worked for previous versions do not work the same in R2.

"To continue working in Flare 2017, custom scripts will have to be updated for the current compile behavior. I apologize for any inconvenience."

So, we don't know how to "update" our masterpage scripts to work with r2. Have just contacted Support again for guidance. They didn't mention the mc-toc-depth setting, so will look into that now.

[NorthEast]

"To continue working in Flare 2017, custom scripts will have to be updated for the current compile behavior. I apologize for any inconvenience."

So, we don't know how to "update" our masterpage scripts to work with r2. Have just contacted Support again for guidance. They didn't mention the mc-toc-depth setting, so will look into that now.

This post was initially about mini-TOCs (and TOCs in general) being broken on the first 2017r2 release - but that's been fixed now.

What are your master page scripts?

If your problem is that you have custom scripts that expect the content of the mini-TOC to be populated at build time, then they're probably not working because all TOC and navigation links are now generated dynamically at run time.
It's been discussed in other threads, but to solve it you'd need to adjust your scripts to include a delay, so that your script starts after MadCap's scripts have finished populating the TOCs/navigation links.