Can I have two topics appear on the same HTML page?

[adelleolson]

Is there a way to have HTML output that shows two or more very short topics on the same web page?
Suppose I have a document with this outline:

* What's Fixed (no text, just the heading) (Level 1)

** Installation Bugs (Level 2)
*** Bug A (with text) (Level 3)
*** Bug B (with text)

** Compiler Bugs (Level 2)
***Bug C (with text)[/list]

In the HTML output, I don't want a page that just says "What's Fixed", followed by a separate page for each Level 2 and Level 3 topic.
I want the first page to show the "What's Fixed" heading followed by the "Installation Bugs" heading and "Bug A" with its text. Then the other bugs can be on separate pages. I still want each Bug to be a separate topic so I can reuse them and so they appear in the bookmarks.

I can't just include the Level 1 and Level 2 headings on the file for the Level 3 topic because I want the ability to rearrange the outline (perhaps to move Bug A to the Compiler Bugs section later.

Any guidance on how to set this up?

[RamonS]

Your best option is to use snippets. Each topic turns into a snippet and then your create as many new empty topics as needed that then get the various snippets inserted as needed or have conditions applied.

[LeslieT]

I have experimented with this.

If you drag the HTML topic file into the XML editor, it automatically creates a cross reference. If you drag a snippet file onto the page but not within an existing element, it automatically creates a snippet block. There is no quick way to use a topic in the same way as the snippet, but I opened the topic in the text editor and manually changed the file reference path for the snippet block to the HTML topic file. And lo and behold it worked! It behaves just as a normal snippet block would, but includes the whole topic file contents.

[adelleolson]

Thanks for your replies!
I tried using a topic as a snippet and it worked. However I don't understand how this helps me. How does using snippets give me the desired output?

This seems like a common scenario - having a Topic with a heading but no content. No? Do most people ensure that each topic with a heading also has content? I just want to have:
Heading 1
... Heading 2
.......Heading 3
.......text for heading 3

[NorthEast]

So you want sub-headings within the topic to appear in the contents?

You can do that by manually adding bookmarks to the headings within the topic, and then adding these to the TOC.

You can get Flare to do this automatically too - but only for the tripane skin, not top nav.
Select the item(s) in the TOC and open its properties, then go to the Auto-generate tab, set Compute sub-entries from linked file, and select Insert Computed Entries.


Mind, I do think having bookmarks in the contents can sometimes be confusing, because you don't know which items take you to a new topic or a bookmark.

[adelleolson]

Maybe I am not explaining this clearly. My TOC/bookmarks are fine.
In my HTML output, I am trying to avoid having an HTML page that only has a Heading on it, with no other content.

I want to see this output, all on 1 HTML page, even though each thing is a separate topic.

What's Fixed
...Installation Bugs
.......Bug A and description
.......Bug B and description

Maybe I am wrong by having separate Topics that just contain the Level 1 and Level 2 headings? Is so, how else would I do it?

[RamonS]

I would have the heading and the associated content all in one topic. I assume you always want the heading and the text go together, right?

[adelleolson]

Well, yes, but I want to easily change the order of what's in the doc. And I want to reuse some of the contents (such as description for Bug X, which might go into another doc).
For NOW, I want
What's Fixed
....Installation Bugs
........Bug A
........Bug B
....Compiler Bugs
........Bug X
....Execution Bugs
........Bug Y

However later I may decide that Bug Y belongs under Compiler bugs and should come before Bug X.
So it would be nice to just move Bug Y in the TOC and not have to edit any topic files.

[NorthEast]

A 'topic' and a 'page' are the same thing in web outputs; so you can't have several topics in one page.

But you can have one topic/page that includes all that content, and set up bookmarks in your TOC that link to the different headings/sections inside that page.

Each section in that page could also be split up into snippets, if you think that you'll move them around (or re-use them elsewhere).

[jjw]

Let me guess adelleolson ... you're an Authorit user right?

Authorit lets you choose whether to start a topic on a new HTML page or append it to the previous page, but as far as I can see there is no obvious way to do this in Flare.

As an ex-Authorit user I also found the workaround for embedding topics, but I haven't been using it because I decided it would confuse anyone who had to use my Flare source in the future. It's just not the Flare way of doing things.

J

[adelleolson]

Nope, not an Authorit user, just a newbie converting from FrameMaker

I am starting to accept that there's no way to do this.
It's ok, I will just reorganize things and work around this.

Thanks, everyone for your replies!