MadCap Software Forums

For single sourcing, how do you change the hyperlinking between .chm files to be cross references in print output?

I have 23 separate .chm files and I hyperlink to reference between them. What is the best way to translate this to the printed output? I really just want the text to not be linked and not say anything different. Thanks!

I suspect your problem may be similar to mine. So please bear with me if I'm wrong.

I'm working on a new Book - part of a major .chm project. I had a problem where my on-line chm had links to files which were not to be included in one of the books.

My own solution was to create "Conditional Text", and in basically two ways.

First was as follows.

(See also: Finding and Replacing Codes)
(See also: Finding and Replacing Codes in the on-line Help.)

The first line above has Conditional Text applied - "Not in Print"
The second line above has Conditional Text applied - "The Menus"

The second was not dissimilar. I often referred to files within a folder called "Popups" (From the Robohel* days). The same rules applied.

My text night read, "Ensure you select the correct Baud Rate or...."

Again I used the Conditional Text with "Baud Rate", but in this case, I used a different font for the print version, and included the term in a "Glossary" which I created specifically and placed at the back, just before my Index.

Hope this does help.

George.

Thank you for your post. I fear what I will have to do is create conditional text where the exact same paragraph is listed twice, but one of them has a hyperlink and the other has the hyperlink text, but no link.
I was hoping for a way just to "turn off" hyperlinks in printed output without having multiple versions of each paragraph.

Submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx. Other users have mentioned something similar, so the more who request it the faster it (might) be implemented. Although I think it would be better if they had a way to do it via styles or at least use a custom attribute to signal which items you don't want to be hyperlinked in the output, because there might be some places in the output where you do want a hyperlink to be visible and clickable.

Thank you Lisa! I will submit a request.

You can conditionally unbind the hyperlinks. No need to create the same content twice. Right-click anywhere in the hyperlink, and choose Conditions. Assign your hyperlink to a condition - I use "Condition.ATagLink". And check Unbind in lower left. In the print target, Exclude the ATagLink condition. Text stays; link goes away.

You can use an advanced search and replace tool, such as FAR HTML, to condition all your a tags. Be sure to back up first!!!! I agree it would be much easier if "unbind a tags" were a target option.

Ginny,
Thank you so much for that tip! It works and I am so excited!

GinnyR wrote:You can conditionally unbind the hyperlinks. No need to create the same content twice. Right-click anywhere in the hyperlink, and choose Conditions. Assign your hyperlink to a condition - I use "Condition.ATagLink". And check Unbind in lower left.

I thought MadCap had added some feature like that, but I was trying to apply the condition to the <a> tag which removed the hyperlink and the text that made up the hyperlink. I missed the unbind option in the Conditions screen or didn't understand what it did. I think at the time MadCap added that option I wasn't using Flare much and forgot about it by the time I got back to working with Flare.

Thanks for pointing it out, Ginny. (Now I have to go find those hyperlinks and take care of them. Luckily I mostly use xrefs so it's only links to email or websites I have to fix.)

GinnyR wrote:You can conditionally unbind the hyperlinks. No need to create the same content twice. Right-click anywhere in the hyperlink, and choose Conditions. Assign your hyperlink to a condition - I use "Condition.ATagLink". And check Unbind in lower left.

It appears there is a "gotcha" when building PDF output. If you have a hyperlink that says something like "more information is available in the Configuration section", where "Configuration section" is a hyperlink to another topic, then doing this condition and unbind option works. However, if you have text that is a properly formatted URL (e.g., http://www.madcapsoftware.com) or email address (e.g., support@madcapsoftware.com), then the PDF compiler automatically converts it to a clickable link (just like this forum software did when I submitted this post). If you do the condition with unbind option than you get a standard click icon when you hover over the text. If you don't use the condition with unbind option then you get a little tooltip-like icon of a W in a square (or something like that) when you hover over the text. So you can limit what happens when you hover but you apparently can't get rid of the hyperlink altogether. I think this is a function of the PDF compiler, not something coming from Flare. So if you have a properly formatted URL or email address, there's no way you can not make them clickable in PDF output, even if you do the two identical blocks of text, one with hyperlink one without, because the PDF compiler will make it clickable regardless.

Dang it all.

Lisa,
Thank you for the tip. I do not have anything such as a URL or email address to worry about, the conditional tag is perfect for what I need.