publish target publishes adjacent content

[owenf]

Hi everyone,

I'm not sure that this is specifically webhelp mobile related, but it's the first time i'm publishing using FTP because it's webhelp mobile so here goes...

I have one project called 'userguides' which is for printed userguides and online help, for the same software delivered on blackberry and iphone platforms. when i publish the iphone target, all the blackberry content goes up too - and can be found with search though not accessed through TOC. my source project structure is

\content\BB
\content\iphone
\content\resources

is that something to do with it? i've tried finding some info about how the publishing mechanism works because i expect to be able to just publish a subset of a project. am i drifting off the best-practice course?

thanks for any help you have

owen

[NorthEast]

Your WebHelp content will include everything in the project Contents folder; if you want to exclude content, then you have to use conditional tags to do so. (The TOC doesn't determine what's included.)

It's not specific to Mobile, it's like that for all help outputs (WebHelp, DotNet, HTML Help).

[owenf]

Thanks Dave,

I've also just found this topic:
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... ect#p59291
about publishing multiple targets - clear out the build folder, build to distinctly different folders etc - all best practices i _should_ be observing.

I'll tidy that up, conditionalise my outputs, and try again.

cheers
Owen

[owenf]

Just a quick followup to possibly help anyone else out there with the same issue. I took Dave's suggestion and applied conditional tags right on the content subfolders - and also selectively excluded those tags in my two targets - which at a stroke fixed my problem. The publish engine also automatically deleted the unwanted content from the FTP server because it had been conditionalised out. another victory for flare in the battle to take back common sense


thanks
Owen

[AmyFujii]

What about the "Do not use Content folder in output option when creating a WebHelp target? What does that do? I assumed if I checked it that files under Contents would not be included in the output but that is not the case.

[AmyFujii]

When I apply a conditional tag to a file or folder (in Properties window, click Conditional Text, select an condition and click OK), I get the following error: "Apply Dialog Failed: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" So if I cannot set conditional tags, how do I exclude topics from a WebHelp output?

[LTinker68]

What about the "Do not use Content folder in output option when creating a WebHelp target? What does that do? I assumed if I checked it that files under Contents would not be included in the output but that is not the case.

That option means that in the final output, there is no top-level Content folder. Instead, files that were at the root of the Content Explorer folder will be in the root folder of the output, and files that were inside folders in the Content Explorer will be in those folders in the root of the output.

The conditional tags have no affect on whether or not the Contents folder is included -- the conditional tags are dealt with before the Contents folder is created, so if something is marked as being excluded, then it'll be excluded, regardless of the status of the option mentioned above.

So if the file structure in the Content Explorer is:

Code: Select all

(Content Explorer)
welcome.htm
config (folder)
   config_intro.htm
   config_access.htm

Then not having that option enabled would result in an output structured as:

Code: Select all

default.htm
Contents (folder)
   welcome.htm
   config (folder)
      config_intro.htm
      config_access.htm

Having the option enabled would result in:

Code: Select all

default.htm
welcome.htm
config (folder)
   config_intro.htm
   config_access.htm

[LTinker68]

When I apply a conditional tag to a file or folder (in Properties window, click Conditional Text, select an condition and click OK), I get the following error: "Apply Dialog Failed: Object reference not set to an instance of an object" So if I cannot set conditional tags, how do I exclude topics from a WebHelp output?

Sounds like Flare got into a bad state or one of the components in the .NET Framework did. If you close down Flare and restart it, does the problem persist?

[AmyFujii]

Lisa, thanks for the great explanation of the do not use content folder option. I called MadCap Support and they had me send the project to them for the conditional tags issue. It is a problem with both my projects in source control but not projects that are not in source control. My projects are in Subversion 1.6.5.