Insert images directly into TOC

[Dave1975]

Good day to all,

I was wondering whether it is a best practice to insert images as an entry in a TOC?

Some background: the UI of our machine software holds a large number of procedures that can be carried out by operators or service engineers.

If one of the steps calls for additional information, a button can be clicked and that info appears in a new smaller window. Whatever needs to appear is generated by Flare. Sometimes these are fullblown topics, but often it might just be a picture with an arrow pointing at a component.

As only items that are linked to a TOC appear in the output, the only way I see now is to simply add an item in the TOC and link to the picture, but I have two issues here:
I don't know if this is acceptable to do so without causing any problems further down the line.
The TOC I'm adding them to is the one from our HTML5 Online Help output which is linked to the UI as well. What happens of course is that those pics appear as items in the tree view of the Online Help Tripane and as they seem to "fly around" solo with no extra info they might confuse the users.

If all else fails I could set up a seperate TOC and target for these items but that may complicate things in the building process for the UI.

any suggestions are welcome.

thank you

regards

Dave

[Nita Beck]

First of all, I assume that you mean that you've got these images in individual topic files. AFAIK, it's just not possible to link a TOC entry to an image file directly.

You don't necessarily have to put these image-only topics onto the TOC directly, but you do need to link to them from other topics that are present on the TOC. Then, in your target, be sure to turn on the option that reads something like "Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly to the target". Because your image-only topics would be LINKED TO from topics that are on the TOC, they will be included in your output, but they won't appear on the generated navigation that is based on your TOC.

I hope I've understood your question and haven't led you astray.

[jjw]

AFAIK, it's just not possible to link a TOC entry to an image file directly.

FYI you can put image files (and pdfs) in a TOC - for online output anyway.

As Nita says, anything you directly link to from a topic will be included whether it's in the toc or not, but it can be a problem if you want to include a file but you don't want to link to it directly in a topic for some reason. I've sometimes just used a link with a display: none style - or you could use a post-build script (in the target), to copy the files that you need to the output.

[NorthEast]

As only items that are linked to a TOC appear in the output, the only way I see now is to simply add an item in the TOC and link to the picture

That's not correct though.

In a HTML5 help output, every file in the Content folder will be included in the output, unless you exclude it.

Files can be excluded if you've selected the target option (on Advanced tab) to Exclude content not linked directly or indirectly from the target.

I'm assuming you've selected that option, which is why you're having to find ways to link the images, so that they get included.

So if you don't select that option, then all files will be included.

[Nita Beck]

AFAIK, it's just not possible to link a TOC entry to an image file directly.

FYI you can put image files (and pdfs) in a TOC - for online output anyway.

I knew about PDFs, but not image files. This is today's "What I learned today" moment for me! Yet another reason I follow the forums avidly. Routinely fill the gaps in my knowledge.