Nav pane TOC vs topic mini-toc

[Louise Bennett]

I Know its a strange request, but does anyone know of a way that I can get items to display in a mini-toc but not in the toc in the nav pane? I've tried experimenting with TOC levels and style classes, but no matter what I do I end up with whatever is showing in the mini toc also appearing in the toc in the navigation pane.

Here's my setup:

- side nav template
- master toc has 3 levels
- test topic has a mini toc that generates a list of its sub-topics in the output

Desired results:
- side nav lists only the sub-topic
- test topic lists sub-topics

Actual results:
- side nav lists the test topic and its sub-topics
- test topic lists sub-topics

[NorthEast]

I didn't really understand the description of what you want, but have you tried a menu proxy rather than a mini-TOC?

The side nav can only display the TOC set in your target.
A menu proxy can display any TOC that you want.

[Louise Bennett]

Thanks Dave, I will try a menu proxy.

Here's the problem I am trying to solve in case it prompts any other ideas.

I have an HTML5 help system containing 230 guides. A large number of our users still want to be able to access the PDF output but not all have internet access, so I package the PDFs in the HTML5 output and link to them from a PDFs page in the master TOC. I am trying to find a way to easily add these PDFs every time we have a new release, which for minor releases is about 3 monthly. I started with a table linking the PDFs, but every time the PDF name changed (to indicate a new release), I had to recreate the links. As you can imagine, this grew tired pretty quickly.

So my idea was that if I created a mini-toc in the page listing the PDFs, I could then just drag and drop them on mass as children of the PDFs page in the TOC for the target and forego the links. but on doing this the PDFs also appear in the side nav, making it REALLY long.

One day I hope to be able to drop the PDFs completely but at the moment the users are reluctant to give them up.

Louise.

[NorthEast]

Create a TOC that only contains links to the PDFs. In the page listing the PDFs, insert a menu proxy that's linked to that TOC.

[Louise Bennett]

Isn't that effectively like creating a page with links to the PDFs which would need updating every time the PDF name changes? Or could I just drag the PDFs into the TOC?

[NorthEast]

Isn't that effectively like creating a page with links to the PDFs which would need updating every time the PDF name changes? Or could I just drag the PDFs into the TOC?

Yep, just drag the PDFs into the TOC.

I have something similar where I put content in a folder, then just drag and drop the whole folder into a TOC.

[Louise Bennett]

OK, tried doing this and I'm not getting anything listed. Here's exactly what I did:
1. Created a new topic - PDF_test
2. Created a new TOC - PDF_test_TOC
3. In the new topic, added a menu proxy that is calling the new toc.
4. In the toc, added a heading (Config) and dragged 3 PDFs into it as children.
5. Built the output.

Results: the new topic is turning up in the nav pane (as expected), but when I select it, it has no contents other than its heading (PDF_test). Even the heading in the TOC (Config) doesn't show up. I checked that the menu proxy isn't disabled in the CSS. Not sure what else to try? Its like all the contents of the proxy are disabled for some reason.

[NorthEast]

When you inserted the menu proxy, what settings did you use?
I'd guess you've probably set the menu proxy to be Context sensitive - don't!

[Louise Bennett]

Hi Dave,

Sorry for the delay - I'm only just back from vacation today.

You were right - context sensitive was selected (by default). I turned it off and set the levels to 'all', and it worked. Now I need to work on the style of the output as its all bunched up as if in a table. From the look of the proxy I can assign a skin to the output, so I'll have a go at that.

Thanks again,

Louise.

[Louise Bennett]

One last question on this thread that I'm hoping someone can help with.

I have the menu proxy working now, but unlike a normal menu where you can have parent items and child items, and all the child items collapse into the parent item in the output, everything is remaining open in the output of my menu proxy. So I have a long list that is broken into categories, but I can't collapse those categories in the way I would in a 'normal' menu.

Is there a setting somewhere that I can use to have this menu open in a collapsed state? Here's a pic of what I am seeing in my output. I'd like to be able to collapse each section heading (Operations, Planning, etc) if possible. In the TOC I'm using for the menu proxy the child objects are nested under the headings (parent objects), which I thought would create the expand/collapse functionality as per any other TOC.

menu.png

[NorthEast]

Is there a setting somewhere that I can use to have this menu open in a collapsed state?

No, there's nothing in Flare to set the menu proxy to expand/collapse like the side nav menu.

If that's something you'd want, then I'd suggest putting in a feature request to MadCap.

[Louise Bennett]

Thanks Dave, will do.

Louise.