Hi MadCappers,
I'm new to online help. We have a large, complicated software product with CSH help. It was working correctly six months ago, but since then, I have made a lot of changes, and I didn't go about changing the identifier names (IDN) in a systematic way. About half are correct, and the other half (maybe 300) need fixing.
What I have now:
IDNs that are working correctly
IDNs that are the same, but have different topics assigned to them
IDNs that have been changed, but have the same topics assigned to them
IDNs for topics that have been removed/deleted/repurposed
New topics requiring new IDNs.
Does anyone have a good way to identify the changes the developer needs to make? I spent two days making an Excel spreadsheet (then and now), but I'm not sure this is going help much.
Any ideas? Thanks!
Sandy
I assume you are talking about the Identifier you can see in the alias editor, which is one of the ways you can create context-sensitive help. These identifiers should not normally change or get attached to different topics unless you change them directly, so I am not clear how you ended up with your category 2 and 3. However, if you have the project in source control or you have a copy of the project from before all these changes, compare the alias file (.flali - it lives in the Project\Advanced folder within the project) before and after the changes with a diff tool. This should help you identify the identifiers in this category.
If you double-click the alias file in Flare, then double-click the blank heading above the first column (with the traffic lights) to sort by that column, you should be able to find identifiers for the deleted topics in category 4. These will be yellow if there is no longer a topic assigned to them (usual result if you deleted the topic or unassigned the identifier within Flare), or red if they refer to a topic file that no longer exists (possible if you deleted, moved, or renamed the topic files outside of flare). You can either attach these identifiers to new topics or delete them if they are no longer needed. As far as repurposed topics go, if the old identifier is no longer appropriate, you will have to track these down yourself.
In the alias editor there is a Generate Identifiers button. It looks like an index card with a blue arrow wrapped around it. You can use this tool to generate identifiers for unassigned topics, and you can assign them numeric values in a range not otherwise used by the project, to not only create the identifiers for new topics (category 5) but also be able to distinguish them from the old ones. You should wait until you have addressed the other categories first, though, so you are not assigning new identifiers to topics from category 2 or 3 that should instead be reattached to their existing identifiers.
Thanks, DevJoe.
I've done all that you mentioned and more (hence the spreadsheet). So the only way is to slog through the changes.
I have a feature request for the Identifier list - you can't display the page in a web browser, or save the page as a text file. You have to generate a report, copy and paste into Word, and then strip out the unneeded information. Allow the identifier list to be saved in its table form, so we can do those nasty comparisons.
You need to submit feature requests to MadCap. This is just a discussion forum.
If you have something that parses XML, you can get the table you want from the .flali file (just identifiers and topic names - the numeric values are in the .hh file from the same folder due to weird historical reasons).