layouts and section headings

[livetoski]

Is there any way to have the heading of a topic display as a subheading in a layout? Or better still, the headings in the TOC? So far, I have only figured out how to display variables for the whole document. I have a few documents that are hundreds of pages long, and I'd like subheadings. I can appreciate what I am asking for, but no harm in asking, and maybe there is a workaround, other than a zillion layouts with different text. Thanks!

[LTinker68]

I'm not quite getting what you're asking. Could you provide some more details?

[livetoski]

Hi Lisa,

I am printing a largish document with many sections. I'd like the header to say not just Widgets 3.0, but Widgets 3.0 Installation and then in the next section of the PDF, the header would say Widgest 3.0 Configuration. The output I am looking for is identical to what you would get when using Word, where you can define the headers and footers for entire sections.

There are a lot of choices a user has to make and the steps are similar and I get lost in the doc, printed and online.It would be great if I could place an identifier, a chapter name or a section name, somehow, on each page that told the user where they are in the document, that is, you are in configuration A or configuration AB, or post-installation step AB.

I was thinking that if I can insert a variable into layouts, would there be any way to get Flare, as a property of the TOC item, to allow for subheadings on page layouts. The only way I can see around some kind of intuitive method of injecting subheadings is to have different layouts for each section of the doc, literally apply a new layout with different headings to each toc item, which is similar to how we handle it in Word, but much more cumbersome. The only other solution is to allow for hundreds of pages to have exactly the same heading.

[NorthEast]

You mentioned that you'd already looked at variables, but would the Heading variables not work for you?

You can insert Heading1-Heading6 or AnyLevel; and these will display the relevant heading.

[livetoski]

You may have solved it right there. Thank you so much. I am going to read up on variables. It seemed like such a simple thing that should be solvable. Thanks! Linda

[livetoski]

I have completely overlooked the heading variables all this time. Oh well, I've had other problems to solve, in my defence...

Next question:

When editing the layout (with the any level variable now applied) how do I select the variable so that I can format it, say, either bold it or give it italics, to make the subheading stand out a bit? I have nothing to select when editing, probably because it has nothing to place in the little editing window, as it's specific to a document. So I opened a layout through a document, but still don't get any representative text for the variable. Is this possible? I imagine I will just have to format the variables I can see, and that is that for that.

Thanks.

[livetoski]

Okay, well, I just selected the "empty space" and it seems to have applied a tag. First there was a lot of balking and exceptions thrown, and then I just closed out and did it again and it accepted the bridle, so to speak. Flare reminds me of a horse, a lot. No, no NO! STAMP! then I take some time, walk away, restart and Yes!

[NorthEast]

Not sure I follow you.

If you open the page layout, and then open the frame contents panel; you just apply styles or formatting in the same way as you do in a topic. For example, you should be able to apply a paragraph style, or select the variable and apply inline formatting like bold or italics.

[livetoski]

Have you tried to format a heading variable in the layout? I don't see a thing when I look in the Frames content panel. I see the code under the menu bar: MadCap:variable | b|MadCap:variable| b |i|MadCap:variable

The first two variables are visible in the editing pane, but the variable that I have been able to format italic (i) without seeing doesn't not show up. I have a lovely screen shot, but I am not sure how to get that to you. So literally, as far as the editing screen is concerned, the third variable doesn't exist.

[LTinker68]

I have custom paragraph classes for my headers and footers (one set for left pages, one set for right pages). So in the page layout, in a header frame, for example, I'll insert the header variable, then I'll apply the appropriate class to the paragraph. I have the show blocks feature enabled, so I right-click on the paragraph block and select the class from there. That paragraph class does the formatting on the variable. I don't use inline formatting.

[livetoski]

Yes, that's a better solution overall. I would have to create paragraph classes for these variables and I haven't done so. thanks Lisa.

Linda

[livetoski]

very strange complication, Now all my variables are bolded. I have gone through the style sheet, print and non print and default mediums to remove font formatting. PDFs print with normal variables, but webhelp output cannot shake the bold format. I have tried deleting the subhead style class, nothing. My webhelp all has bolded variables. Any ideas?

[Nita Beck]

Just to be sure, check how MadCap | variable is set in your style sheet (assuming that's not one of the styles you already examined).

[livetoski]

Hi Nita, that was the first thing that I checked. Print, non print, and default mediums.

MadCap|variable
{

}

MadCap|variable.pageLayout_subhead
{
color: #404040;
font-family: Verdana, ' Arial', ' sans serif';
font: verdana;
font-style: italic;

There isn't anything there bold.

Here's my flvar file:

<Variable
Name="product">N-central</Variable>
<Variable
Name="version">3.1</Variable>
<Variable
Name="product2"
Comment=""
Definition="Some text">N-compass</Variable>
<Variable
Name="document"
Comment=""
Definition="Some text">Administration Console</Variable>
<Variable
Name="company"
Comment=""
Definition="Some text">N-able Technologies</Variable>
</CatapultVariableSet>

Okay, so just checked the framesource code, the after generation code of the topic, as the only variation I saw was in the generation of webhelp (pdf and word targets did not have bold variables) and saw a span code applied to the variables!! I went back into the style sheet, and span at the root level had bold applied. I removed that, and regenerated and the bolding in the webhelp is gone.

Now, when I had looked at my pre generation source code for the topic, NO span was applied, I only saw it in the after generation code. So the span code bolding the variables was applied during generation. The bizarre thing is that not all my spans picked up a bold anyway. I don't remember setting bold for the root level of span (it's certainly possible in another mood I might have...)

ooeeeaaa. Oh well. I'll have to be happy with that. My colleague here says that it's not magic, it had to have happened somehow, but as long as it's not happening now, I am relieved.

thanks, I figured this out by having to puzzle it through here. Linda