MadCap Software Forums

I am a beginner using Flare 5 to create two versions of Help and PDF output. What's the best practice for achieving the following...is it better to create separate ToCs for each version or to have 1 ToC and use conditional tags to generate each version? Thank you!

Version 1 HTML Help

• Topic A
  Topic B
  Topic C
  Topic D

Version 2 HTML Help

• Topic B
  Topic D

Personally, I have one TOC and apply conditional tags to topics I don't want to appear in the print output. If there's something that I don't want to appear in online output, then I'll apply a conditional tag to that specific topic file. The reason being that applying a conditional tag to a TOC entry just hides the TOC entry for online output but still includes the topic in the online output. The print output, on the other hand, is generated strictly from the TOC, so conditioning out a TOC entry is the same as applying a conditional tag to the topic itself. For online output, in addition to apply a conditional tag to the topic itself, I'll apply it to the entry in the TOC, too, even though it's not necessary (by applying the conditional tag to the topic itself, it's automatically removed from the generated TOC). That way, I can tell at a glance which topics are for online output, which are for print output, and which are for both outputs, just by looking at the color blocks in the TOC.

I prefer to do a separate TOC for each target. In one project, we have basic user, advanced user, and admin guides - all PDFs. With very few exceptions, there is a different set of topics in each guide, so I had to check very carefully to make sure that each TOC included the right topics. I do the output condition tagging of the topics in the Content Explorer so I can still see at a glance what the colors are and which guide(s) the topic is included in. This might seem a bit redundant, but it worked well for me.
Regards to all.....

I put the content for my different projects into different folders as well, just to keep tabs on what's what. (I have a folder for each manual, with another one called "Universal" for topics that go in all of them.) And also have separate TOCs for them.

And I've just realised that all the conditions I put on in my TOCs was completely pointless, so now going through my Content Explorer to put conditions on there! D'oh! (Fortunately you can select more than one topic at a time, so that wasn't as painful as I was expecting.)

My experience echoes gmel999's: Multiple TOCs provide the flexibility to handle the content differently based on the demands of linear (e.g., PDF/print) and nonlinear (WebHelp) deliverables. Multiple TOCs do require more maintenance; however, I have found that I've restructured WebHelp content significantly for a PDF target, more than simply turning on/off particular topics. If you are delivering only WebHelp, however, one TOC may do fine.

To check whether changes I've made to styles in one PDF, with a separate stylesheet, I want to swap between the two PDF targets and TOCs. The easiest way to do this, I HAD found, was to change the primary target and Master TOCs, but recently whenever I change the TOC I get the "object reference not set to an instance of an object" error. Once or twice I've even had the alarming response in the UI where I've had TWO Targets labelled as "Primary" in the Project Organizer.

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