Glossary: Am I going to have to create one manually?

[chuck_agari]

What I want to get from a glossary I can't figure out how to do, in part because of Flare's limitations. Am I going to have to resort to creating a Glossary topic manually?

First, I currently create PD output, but sometime, hopefully in the near future, will also be producing HTML5 output. We also have a fairly extensive glossary of terms that I've been compiling in our style guide we have on Confluence, and it's getting time to make this part of our product docs. We also have 3 products (so far), with some terms being universal and some terms being specific to certain products.

In our glossary, we use formatting to call out specific content. for example, in our definition of "host address resource record," we say:

A DNS record type that maps a DNS domain name to an IP address (or multiple IP addresses).

Commonly referred to as an A record.

Example: agari.com. A 50.57.232.127

It answers the question "What is the IP address for a name (usually a subdomain or host)?"

(The record example after "Example:" is formatted as monospaced--technically the "code" class is applied--but I can't just show that inline in this post.) Note that "DNS" in the first sentence is also a link to the DNS glossary entry. For that reason, I wanted to create glossary topics, so I could have rich text, links, etc. But when glossary terms are in separate topics, they do not appear in PDFs when you used a glossary proxy, nor can they act as pop-ups in HTML5 help. (I got this directly from MadCap support.)

As a related aside, I have a different definition, for "A record," where the definition is "See host address resource record," where that's a link. I do something similar for all the common acronyms in our space; I want the definition in the spelled-out term and just a reference to the spelled-out term in the acronym term.

But if I just choose the Text option on the Glossary Term tab, I have several issues, and not only that I can't use any sort of formatted text nor add links or graphics.

First, line breaks are gone. This is how this is defined in the Properties dialog box:

glossary_term.png

And this is how it looks in HTML5 (where I have a specific topic and a glossary proxy):

glossary.png

Flare just ran it all together.

Worse, although I have "Convert all occurrences of item" selected in the Glossary tab of the target, you'll notice no link from the definition in the "A record" term.

So am I missing something, or is Flare just wanting in this area?

[Nita Beck]

Sorry in advance for being brief. I hope this is enough to get you going...

Put each term and definition into its own topic. Then, when adding the term to the glossary file, select the Topic option instead of the Text option, as you have done per your screenshot.

[chuck_agari]

Sorry in advance for being brief. I hope this is enough to get you going...

Put each term and definition into its own topic. Then, when adding the term to the glossary file, select the Topic option instead of the Text option, as you have done per your screenshot.

I started with that. The glossary terms do not render in PDFs, nor do they operate as pop-ups in HTML5 output, as MadCap support confirmed.

[Nita Beck]

Don’t know what to say, then. I’ve used that technique for creating glossaries that are output to both PDF and HTML5, although I don’t do the popup thing in the latter.

[devjoe]

If you do have to create one manually, you could try the technique suggested in viewtopic.php?f=75&t=30337&p=137880 of using the regular topic files as snippet blocks.

[sunil_panchal]

I resorted to a manual approach that uses snippets, because as the OP noted, the glossary entries that were linked to topics were not appearing in PDF output. I wanted to have definitions in topics (or snippets) so that I could apply formatting, and also to enable reuse of the definitions elsewhere.

Now, my glossary consists of a two column table; in each row, column 1 contains a glossary term, and column 2 contains a snippet that has the corresponding definition in it. I can sort the table on column 1. However, I don't have the "letter headings" you would get in a generated glossary.

[chuck_agari]

Don’t know what to say, then. I’ve used that technique for creating glossaries that are output to both PDF and HTML5, although I don’t do the popup thing in the latter.

I have a different glossary, currently with 21 terms. 19 of those terms use their own topic. 2 of them have definitions in the text field.

In the PDF target, that glossary is selected. In the TOC, I have a Glossary topic with a glossary proxy. This is the result in the PDF:

glossary2.png