hiding topics in search

[jbean]

i recently merged 3 different projects into one so that i can create a comprehensive help and implement single sourcing.

i still need to generate stand-alone helps for individual products however.

in the output the product specific TOC is fine, and i tagged th eindex entries so only the ones for that product appear.

but if you search on a term, topics for products that should be hidden appear in the results. How do I tag specific topics so that they will not appear in the search for a given output ??? (hopefully that is possible)

thanks

[LTinker68]

I don't think you can do it for a specific output. In the topic's Properties screen there is an option to hide the topic from searching, but you can't set it up so that it can be searchable in the standalone version but not searchable in the merged version.

Submit a feature request for that functionality at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx.

[beagley]

Actually... I think if you come up with a system of condition tags. (See "Conditions"), you could assign different topics different conditions, completely exclude those conditions in your Target file, and then they wouldn't be built in as part of the Search database.

I have three main product trees right now, containing many branches. I use three condition colors on the folders containing all of those files, and I can build a target for just ONE of those topics and exclude the other two. It would get MUCH crazier if I needed to make a lot of different WebHelp outputs, but right now I'm only making three. (And dozens of individual PDF outputs).

[LTinker68]

Yes, but the searchability of a topic is set in the topic's Properties screen, so if the topic should be searchable for one output but not another, then you'd need to create two copies of the topic, set one to be searchable, put them both in the TOC, and set conditions on each topic (at the topic level) so that the appropriate version of the topic is included in the output.

[beagley]

Ah!
I guess I can't imagine having a topic that should actually BE in two different outputs, but only be searchable in ONE of them.

Generally, the problem I run into is that I completely exclude a topic from the TOC, but it ends up in the Search database anyway (the search database includes all topics in my entire project, whether they are included in the TOC or not! Very odd, IMHO.) So I both exclude it from TOC AND set up conditionals and exclude those conditionals in the target file. Then the search database does not include those items.

Just recently, this has gotten tricky because I have "Print Only" and "Screen Only" conditionals along with my project conditionals, and the Conditional screen in the Target editor only allows "Or" setups... I can't have a more complex, "Red And Green OR Red and Yellow", so sometimes I need to swap conditionals on some topics, build a specialized output, and then swap them back before I build my default output. Rarely, but needed sometimes.

[LTinker68]

Generally, the problem I run into is that I completely exclude a topic from the TOC, but it ends up in the Search database anyway (the search database includes all topics in my entire project, whether they are included in the TOC or not! Very odd, IMHO.) So I both exclude it from TOC AND set up conditionals and exclude those conditionals in the target file. Then the search database does not include those items.

If you apply a condition tag to a TOC entry, you only condition out that entry, not the topic itself. The topic is still in the output, it's still searchable, other topics can link to it, and so on.

If you apply a condition tag to a topic file (via the Properties screen), you condition out that topic everywhere -- it won't be in the TOC (even if the TOC entry is still in the TOC file) and it won't be in the output, so it won't be searchable, or appear in the index, and links to that topic are automatically removed (the hyperlink tag is removed, the "clickable" text is left behind).

So...
If you don't want a topic to be in the output, apply the condition tag to the topic file.
If you want a topic in the output but not the TOC, apply the condition tag to the TOC entry.
If you want the topic to be in the output but not searchable, then modify the search option in the topic's Properties screen.