Clean XHTML - No Table of Contents indentation

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FrankyT
Propeller Head
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2012 3:45 am
Location: United Kingdom

Clean XHTML - No Table of Contents indentation

Post by FrankyT »

Hello User Assisters,

I'm generating a set of files in Clean XHTML format. In the Table of Contents that is generated, all the headings are formatted as top-level-headings, regardless of their levels.

Each item in the TOC has the following format:

Code: Select all

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="GenTOCTable1" style="width: 100%;">
    <col style="width: 0pt;"/>
    <col/>
    <col style="width: 10pt;"/>
    <tr>
        <td class="mcReset"/>
        <td class="GenTOCText1"><a class="GenTOCText1" href="#xxxxxxx">Nice Topic</a>
        </td>
        <td class="GenTOCPageText1">
            <MadCap:xref class="TOCPageNumber" xmlns:MadCap="http://www.madcapsoftware.com/Schemas/MadCap.xsd">  <![CDATA[ ]]></MadCap:xref>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
Note how the style classes are all GenTOCText1.

Yet with a PDF target, the same TOC proxy produces the desired indented output.

Could this be a bug in Clean XHTML, or am I doing something wrong? I've checked all the TOC settings I can find, to no avail.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

Franky
Nita Beck
Senior Propellus Maximus
Posts: 3667
Joined: Thu Feb 02, 2006 9:57 am
Location: Pittsford, NY

Re: Clean XHTML - No Table of Contents indentation

Post by Nita Beck »

Per the documentation for Flare 2019:
Clean XHTML produces basic HTML files that are free of MadCap-specific tags and not dependent upon other MadCap-generated files. The output does not include any skins, search, navigation, or other extra features; it is simply your single-sourced content.
https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... Output.htm

That suggests to me Flare is not building any navigation that shows hierarchy. It's just taking the topics you asked it to process and processing them in order, without any further navigational processing, as well as without other things such as building a search database.

This is my guess, though. I've not been asked to produce clean XHTML for any clients. Anyone else got practical experience to share with our friend?
Nita
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RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
FrankyT
Propeller Head
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2012 3:45 am
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Clean XHTML - No Table of Contents indentation

Post by FrankyT »

Thanks. I had consulted the Flare documentation before asking my question. I interpreted "The output does not include any ... navigation" as meaning that there was no "master file" that gathered together the topics in the same way that the old MCBOOK file used to do for the now-defunct XHTML Book output.

My Clean XHTML target was converted from a PDF target. It used the same Flare FLTOC file, and one of the topics linked to in the FLTOC file happened to include a TOC proxy. In PDF output, this TOC proxy produces a multi-tiered TOC. I didn't know in advance what the Clean XHTML target would do with it. I supposed it might do nothing. What it actually does is generate a single-tiered TOC that is of little use in its raw form. It looks like the output of a feature that is 70% complete, but got abandoned or lowered in priority. Madcap have clearly done some work on it.

It's not a huge problem for me - I just want to know if I'm missing something. I'm writing a script to generate a single, long XHTML file from the Clean XHTML output (please, don't tell me why this is a bad idea - I have my reasons :) ), and I need to know if I'm going to need to do some further post-processing on the TOC in the TOC proxy - it looks as though I am.

I'd still be interested if anyone else has tried to get a TOC proxy working in Clean XHTML.

F
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