I am getting empty glossaries in some PDFs. No rhyme or reason to it. They use the same link path as other PDFs where the glossary prints fine.
All these glossaries printed fine in PDFs output in Flare 10.
The link is:
/Content/Common/glossary_page.htm
I have checked and double-checked. All the documents use the same glossary page. Is there some obscure setting in the targets that I need to change?
Thanks for any hints.
Empty glossaries in PDFs (Flare 2017)
Re: Empty glossaries in PDFs (Flare 2017)
I've fixed this problem. There were two causes, neither of which is easy to guess:
1. Madcap has changed the format of glossary files, introducing a new glossTerm attribute of the GlossaryEntry element. E.g.
Old-style glossaries appear to be ignored.
To update your glossaries, you need to open each one in Flare, whereupon a dialog box will prompt you to let Flare modify it.
Flare doesn't warn you about the out-of-date glossaries when it opens the project, and it doesn't log errors or warnings about them when you build your documents. You only find out when you view your output and see empty glossaries (i.e. topics with just the "Glossary" heading and no content).
2. By default, Flare 10 used to select all glossaries in a target if you didn't make your own selections and deselections. This meant that an empty <Glossaries> element in a target file was interpreted as "Include all glossaries". When you opened such a target in Flare, and looked in the Glossary tab, you'd see all glossaries selected by default, even though you hadn't explicitly selected them yourself, and even though in the target XML the <Glossaries> element remained empty.
In Flare 2017, the default behaviour seems to have reversed. If the <Glossaries> element is empty, this is interpreted as "Exclude all glossaries", and all glossaries are unselected in the Glossary tab of the target.
So in Flare 2017, you need to go through all your existing targets, and manually select which glossaries you want to include in each one.
1. Madcap has changed the format of glossary files, introducing a new glossTerm attribute of the GlossaryEntry element. E.g.
Code: Select all
<GlossaryEntry
TermClass="Hyperlink"
glossTerm="Glossary.Term16">
<Terms>
<Term>Task Container</Term>
</Terms>
<Definition
Link="">A container that is used to hold samples in a particular task. See
also "Container".</Definition>
</GlossaryEntry>To update your glossaries, you need to open each one in Flare, whereupon a dialog box will prompt you to let Flare modify it.
Flare doesn't warn you about the out-of-date glossaries when it opens the project, and it doesn't log errors or warnings about them when you build your documents. You only find out when you view your output and see empty glossaries (i.e. topics with just the "Glossary" heading and no content).
2. By default, Flare 10 used to select all glossaries in a target if you didn't make your own selections and deselections. This meant that an empty <Glossaries> element in a target file was interpreted as "Include all glossaries". When you opened such a target in Flare, and looked in the Glossary tab, you'd see all glossaries selected by default, even though you hadn't explicitly selected them yourself, and even though in the target XML the <Glossaries> element remained empty.
In Flare 2017, the default behaviour seems to have reversed. If the <Glossaries> element is empty, this is interpreted as "Exclude all glossaries", and all glossaries are unselected in the Glossary tab of the target.
So in Flare 2017, you need to go through all your existing targets, and manually select which glossaries you want to include in each one.