[SOLVED] Mini-Tocs Pulling Entry Descriptions

[DurtyMat]

For ease of use, and a quick guide, this is the solution to the issue I was having:

Edit the MadCap|miniTocProxy to display the heading levels I needed.

Edit the p.MiniTOC# that I didnt want a leader (those dots) for by setting the mc-leader-format property to: none

Then I needed to remove the page numbers which was causing major issues unil Ryan posted the hack below, I want to empahsize (because he did) that this isn't supported and real ugly


To remove page numbers from the miniTOC output I needed to do the following:

This was posted by Ryan Cerniglia
I've found a way to disable the page numbers for the second level of the TOC. To disable the page numbers for any other level, change the "2" below to the desired level.

WARNING: Unsupported, Ugly Hack!

Open your stylesheet
Add a class to the TD element named "GenMiniTOCPageText2"
Set the property "display" of the element to "none"
Regenerate PDF


Thanks to Paul, Lisa, and Ryan for helping me figure this out, hopefully it helps other people. If i missed any steps in the recap please let me know.
---------------------------------
Archive Material

So, I am thinking about using mini-tocs to control the "what is in this chapter" pages throughout my manual. BUT we are in the process of implementing a new template for our procedure segue pages that includes a short description of the procedure on the page, so something like this:

<link to procedure>
short desc

<link to procedure>
short desc

now, i could just create a variable or snippet for each short description but, that would create a HUGE list of snippets or variable sets (i was thinking 1 variable set per chapter or section of a chapter to control the short description). after tooling around with some mini-tocs on the field and button descriptions links (these dont have short descriptions) my document looked kind of funny having a mini-toc for F&B segue pages and a list of links/short descriptions on the procedure segue pages.

basically i want the new mini-toc style to create something like this:

<link to procedure>
<pulled short description from linked procedure>

i was thinking that i would have to create some line of code (probably java, which i am still at a basic understanding of) to pull the short description from the linked item.

if anyone has any ideas that would be SUPER awesome.

thanks
-dm

[DurtyMat]

bumping for some forum love.

[doc_guy]

I'm not sure what variables would give you? is this a specific piece of content that you want to reuse in multiple places? It sounds like you just want a summary of a feature that is described in the chapter.

As I'm thinking about this, I think you can use the MINI-TOC to get what you want, and you won't even have to do much jimmying to get it to work. The Mini-TOC pulls it's hirearchy of content, not based on the actual heading levels, but on the mc-heading-level property that is associated with a piece of content.

So you could add a class of H2 that is H2.description. If your H2 had a mc-heading-level of 2, then your H2.description class would have mc-heading-level 3.

Then consider the following topic structure:

Code: Select all

<H1>This is my topics</H1>

<p>Blah blah blah</p>

<h2>Feature name</h2>
<p class="strong">Overview of feature</p>
<h2 class="description">Feature description that you want to appear in the mini-toc.</h2>
<p class="strong">Details</p>
<p> All the rest of the content that you DON'T want to appear in the mini-toc</p>

<h2>Another Feature name</h2>
<p class="strong">Overview of feature</p>
<h2 class="description">Feature description that you want to appear in the mini-toc.</h2>
<p class="strong">Details</p>
<p> All the rest of the content that you DON'T want to appear in the mini-toc</p>

Now when you create your MINI-toc, make sure you take it to level 3 depth, so you get the Feature name AND the description. You can use the mini-toc styles in the style sheet to modify how these appear in relation to each other.

The only think I think you may have trouble with is that when you create your book TOC for printed output, you'll need to make sure you only go down to level 2, or else you will also see the descriptions in your printed table of contents, which isn't what you want.

Does that make sense? I've never tried it, but theoretically, it should work.

If you wanted to make it so that the h2.description text wasn't included in the topic itself, I suppose you would apply the display:none attribute to that entry in the style sheet, but if you do that, you might want to add it to a separate style sheet that is called by the master page so that you can see the text while you're editing, but when the project is actually built, the display:none style will be applied.

[DurtyMat]

Thanks Paul!

I think that might work, I am going to have to switch it from a h3 to a h6 as our main toc uses heading levels 1-5 when going out to print. I don't mind the short descriptions going out to print because our users are still very reliant on our user manuals, /sigh.

I am going to do some testing and let you know how it works out. Thanks again for the help.

-dm

EDIT: initial test, everything works out the way i want it to, except, i dont want the page numbers for the heading 6, any suggestions, see image for info.

minitoc_example.png

[doc_guy]

Right. Dang

That won't happen in online output, but I'm going to have to think about that in printed output. I'm not sure how you can change that...

[doc_guy]

OK. I have no idea if this will work, but check out this setting in the style sheet:



What if for the second level (whatever level corresponds to your H6, or whatever), you change the options on this tab to "leader:none; page-number-width: 0px;"

What happens then?

My hope is that the leader will go away, and if the page number width is 0px, then no page number can be displayed. Try it. Doesn't hurt to try, right?

[doc_guy]

And while you're at it, submit a feature request to MadCap to add an addition option to that tab, where you can set "page-number:none;"

[DurtyMat]

incoming test. more @ 11...not really 11, but it sounded cool.

[EDIT]

So, after testing it, it looks like the changes I am making aren't being applied to the MadCap|MiniTOCProxy. I am changing the p.MiniTOC6 within the stylesheet and when i build it none of the changes I have made are being displayed.

its like the miniToc isn't using the p.MiniTOC for the style because none of the changes I make to this style are reflected in the builds. :-.

[doc_guy]

K. This is annoying, but open a built topic in the browser, then view the source. There are usually (at least) two style sheet links. One is to the style sheet you use in your project. Another is to madcap.css.

Which comes LAST?

And if it is madcap.css, then go open MadCap.css (the compiled version in the build folder), and see if that style sheet is overriding your settings.

[DurtyMat]

will do, i am currently working on some floating text boxes that will house a link to our KB using keywords from the heading (expect questions on this ) to create a link to the search results, the option to post the results in a bulleted list is being looked into, it really depends on how much wrist violin practice i want to get into

thanks for the help, i will be testing it within the hour. again, thanks for the help.

-dm

[DurtyMat]

wait, im going to pdf so i cant access the css, rather i dont use a css is in the output ...

[LTinker68]

You can create a test target for WebHelp output in that project and generate it. Then open one of the compiled htm files in Notepad and see how the stylesheets are referenced. I'm with Paul -- I have a feeling MadCap.css will be listed last.

[DurtyMat]

<script src="../SkinSupport/skin.js">/*<![CDATA[*/ /*]]>*/</script>
<link href="../SkinSupport/MadCap.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<link href="../Resources/Stylesheets/techcomm_css_lite.css" rel="stylesheet" />

code from the webhelp output. :-/

[LTinker68]

Interesting. Your stylesheet was listed last, and assuming the print output applies stylesheets in the same order, then your stylesheet should have precedence. When you made the last changes to the mini-TOC styles, did you verify that you were in the print medium? Sometimes the Stylesheet Editor switches mediums on you with no warning. You might also want to open the stylesheet file in the Internal Text Editor to make sure there aren't conflicting styles declared.

[DurtyMat]

even if i create a new project and edit the default css, the changes i make to p.mintoc6 don't get applied to the heading 6 in the minitoc :-/

[doc_guy]

Check with what Lisa mentioned before about the medium. You need to be sure these changes are applied in the PRINT section of the style sheet, not the default section.

[DurtyMat]

yea i am in the print medium.

css code:

Code: Select all

/*<meta />*/

body
{
	font-family: Arial;
}

h1
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 24.0pt;
}

h2
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 18.0pt;
}

h3
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 14.0pt;
}

h4
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 12.0pt;
}

h5
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 10.0pt;
}

h6
{
	font-weight: bold;
	font-size: 8.0pt;
}

p
{
	font-size: 12.0pt;
	margin-top: 0pt;
	margin-bottom: 0pt;
}

ol,
ul
{
	margin-top: 0px;
	margin-bottom: 0px;
}

img
{
	border: none;
}

a.Popup
{
	
}

MadCap|expandingHead
{
	font-style: italic;
	font-weight: normal;
	cursor: hand;
	text-decoration: none;
	color: #006600;
}

MadCap|expandingBody
{
	color: #777777;
	font-style: italic;
}

MadCap|dropDownHotspot
{
	cursor: hand;
	font-style: italic;
	text-decoration: none;
	color: #006600;
}

div.floatingkb
{
	border-left-style: dashed;
	border-left-width: 2px;
	border-left-color: #008b8b;
	border-right-style: dashed;
	border-right-width: 2px;
	border-right-color: #008b8b;
	border-top-style: dashed;
	border-top-width: 2px;
	border-top-color: #008b8b;
	border-bottom-style: dashed;
	border-bottom-width: 2px;
	border-bottom-color: #008b8b;
	background-color: #90ee90;
	width: 140px;
	float: right;
	clear: right;
}

p.MiniTOC6
{
	mc-leader-format: 'none';
	mc-leader-offset: 0;
}

@media print
{
	p.MiniTOC6
	{
		mc-leader-format: 'none';
		mc-leader-offset: 0px;
	}

	p.TOC6
	{
		mc-leader-format: 'none';
		mc-leader-offset: 0px;
	}
}

[LTinker68]

Sorry if you already mentioned this, but are you building Word or PDF output?

[DurtyMat]

going straight to pdf

and i dont think i ever mentioned it.

[LTinker68]

Wait a minute. Why are you modifying p.MiniTOC6? If you're going down two levels in the miniTOC, then you should only be modifying p.MiniTOC1 and p.MiniTOC2. The paragraph style you modify doesn't match the heading level of the content being pulled -- it matches the depth of that content in the miniTOC.

p.MiniTOC6 was just an example that Paul used.

[DurtyMat]

that makes sense .

i will test is and post results.

[DurtyMat]

well, the minitoc is assigning the heading 6 as minitoc level 5, which would explain no changes being made when i modified the minitoc6 BUT the numbers still show up. so paul's idea won't work, although i appreciate his help.

[doc_guy]

Did you modify the width attribute I showed you on that screen shot? Your style sheet didn't reflect a width setting there.

[LTinker68]

Another option and something I had to resort to on another project is to use cross-references instead of the miniTOC. In my case, it was because I was using one page layout for the "section" book (e.g., Part One, Part Two, etc.), and a different page layout for the "chapters" in that section. I was using different colored bars along the side of the pages to differentiate between a "section" and a "chapter" so I had to use different page layouts. Unfortunately, even though the "chapters" were part of "section" book, the miniTOC proxy wasn't able to handle the change between the page layout. At least, that's what I concluded.

So a solution might be to create two new xref classes, stylize them the way you want, then create a topic and manually insert cross-references to the relevant "chapter" titles inside that "section" book. It's a bit of a pain because you have to set it up manually. And I also discovered a bug with cross-references -- if the topic it's cross-referenced to is excluded from the output, the xref remains in place. That was in v4.0 -- v4.2 might have options to remove the entire xref, but I haven't worked on that project since 4.2 came out, so for now, I applied a condition tag to the specific xref that isn't to be included in the output.

Anyway, you might try that. I didn't have page numbers in my fake miniTOC, but you could try the mc-leader attributes that Paul pointed out.

Make sure you submit a bug report about the problem with modifying the miniTOC style.

EDIT: But answer Paul's question first (we posted at about the same time).

[DurtyMat]

Did you modify the width attribute I showed you on that screen shot? Your style sheet didn't reflect a width setting there.

i see the mc-leader-offset but i dont see the width thing you were talking about. can you point me in the right direction?