Yes, I do have and know the value of source control, but in this case, it's a long story that I won't go into that resulted in me recently receiving a new computer without access to the prevous one . Consequently, I apparently and unfortunately don't have the project that was previously used to create an HTML5 top navigation type output. I have the output but not the project. Is it possible to create a new project from an existing output like this, and if so, does anything in particular need to be done to be able to then create an identical output using the new project?
Firstly, I'd do everything possible to try and retrieve the source project (even an old copy), because fixing this is likely to be quite painful.
There were some posts in the forums about this, but I couldn't easily find one.
It is not possible to automatically convert a HTML5 output back to a source project.
You can use your output as a basis to recreate your project, but it will be a manual process and quite tricky.
To get an idea of what you're up against, take a look at the HTML code of a topic in a HTML5 output, and compare it with the HTML of a topic in the source.
You'll notice a lot of differences, such as:
* Added links to numerous CSS and JS files.
* Added top and side menu navigation links (from your TOC).
* Proxies are replaced with code; i.e. breadcrumb proxies, menu proxies, relationship proxies.
* Things like dropdowns, togglers, glossary terms are replaced with code.
* Snippets are replaced with the snippet code.
* All cross references (MadCap|xref) will now be hyperlinks.
* Excluded conditional text will be removed.
* Master page content will be included in the topic.
* And probably a lot more...
As a rough guide, basically anything that has a MadCap: prefix in the source topic will be processed or modified in some way.
On a slightly more positive note, some other things might be easier to salvage; e.g.:
* Stylesheets will be mostly intact.
* The alias file in Data/Alias.xml can probably be used to recreate a Flare alias (flali) file.
* Master pages are included in the output.
. Consequently, I apparently and unfortunately don't have the project that was previously used to create an HTML5 top navigation type output. I have the output but not the project. Is it possible to create a new project from an existing output like this, and if so, does anything in particular need to be done to be able to then create an identical output using the new project?