Catalogue zip files

[Steveman]

When publishing PDF these files appear. What are they? Do I need them? Should I have them? What happens if I remove them?

[RamonS]

If you take only the PDF and bring it to a different PC, does the PDF work? If yes, my answer would be that you don't really need them. Where do these files show up? In the output folder?

[Steveman]

If I copy and paste the PDF elsewhere it seems to work okay without the file. I've tried opening the zip file but the stuff inside is meaningless. Its only a 1kb file so pretty much it contains it's own heading.

The zip files turn up in the Output folder and then when I publish they turn up there too. Which makes sense I guess since they're 'output.' Just not sure where they come from. I didn't order them.

First I couldn't get the files to publish at all, and now I get too many. I rock.

[RamonS]

Do you have the 'remove stale files' option checked? Maybe that is the file that Flare uses to keep track of which files changed. In case of an output format that generates only ever one file by design this is quite pointless.

[Steveman]

No I have it unchecked based on the other problem I'm having with destination files being deleted. I guess I'll just keep removing the file. I use a template project for each new one so the issue is probably somewhere inside the template project.

[RamonS]

Do you happen to have a file by that name inside the project folder where all your source topics reside? By default, everything in that folder gets included in the output, maybe that really amounts to everything. Other than that my guessing would be even less helpful.

[NorthEast]

The catalogue zip file is included when you publish any target, and you don't need to supply it.

It contains a list of the last published set of files, presumably so Flare can check which ones need updating/removing when you publish again.

[Steveman]

Thanks for that. I've just been deleting it and hoping that it wouldn't be required some time randomly in the future.

[Madcap Guru]

David is right, the Catalog file is really used for publishing, you don't always need to upload all of your webhelp output to your server when you only made a few changes, but the catalog file does get created for other outputs also