Linked subproject not appearing in PDF output

[amatsumoto]

Is it possible to have a linked subproject included in a PDF? For my WebHelp output, the subprojects linked to my main project work swell. When I try this in my print TOC and targets, the subprojects don't appear. I also see the build error message "Skipping sub-entries: The current target type does not support linking to a project (<project_name>)". Have I set something up incorrectly? Or, is PDF output unable to support linked subprojects?

[NickC]

AFAIK, you cannot merge subprojects for printed output such as PDF. When you select a project target to link to in your master TOC, you are only given the choice of targets which are A) the same type as the master help and B) either WebHelp, HTML help or DotNet help (in other words you can't link a DotNet sub projets to a Webhelp master project).

Nick

[amatsumoto]

Bummer. I have my targets set up as PDF, so I guess merging subprojects is for Help output only and not for print. It would certainly be nice if we could merge subprojects in Help AND print. Now I need to cobble together print output so that I have one book instead of two.

[KevinDAmery]

Are they both part of the same Flare project? If so, you could just make a TOC that references all the content and use that for the PDF output.

Relatively easy but not officially supported way to do this:

1) Create a new TOC for the merged output. Don't add any items to it.
2) Open the TOC for PDF 1 in the internal text editor. You'll see something a little like this (albeit much longer):

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CatapultToc
  Version="1">
  <TocEntry
    Title="Testing File"
    Link="/Content/Testing.htm" />
  <TocEntry
    Title="Testing File"
    Link="/Content/Copy of Testing.htm" />
</CatapultToc>

3) Copy all of the TocEntry tags. Do not copy the ?xml or the Catapult tags.
4) Open the new TOC you made in step 1 into the internal text editor.
5) Paste the toc entry tags into the new toc, making sure the toc entries are contained within the catapult tags. It's probably easiest to add a blank line after the pre-existing tocEntry tags and paste into that blank line.
6) Repeat steps 2 - 5 for the second PDF's Toc topics.
7) Save the new toc and link to it in a PDF target.

Madcap doesn't officially support text editing a TOC file, which is why I suggest making a new one (that way if you end up splicing some tags in a way that makes it unreadable, you haven't damaged anything you need to make your existing project work). I've done it before a number of times, though, and it works well as long as you paste the tags correctly.

If they aren't part of the same Flare project, this sounds like a good use for the Global Project Linking feature.

[amatsumoto]

It's taken me a while to get back to this, but these are three separate Flare projects. Project A is the master project with the bulk of the content. Projects B and C are independent projects with content that is linked to project A only through the TOC.

We haven't globally linking the projects for the following reasons.

** The two smaller projects (B and C) generate as Subsystems when we've got a link to them in the WebHelp TOC. This is ideal for us, because then our users can install them as Help plug-ins that blend in with the main Help when they buy licenses for those modules. If we imported those topics by global link, so far as I can tell, we have no way of generating them as self-contained Help chunks that can be added to the main Help at a later time.

** We have two Help systems with different product names that we generate from the content: one that contains everything, and one that contains only the main project. If we globally link the sub-projects, then we will have to apply conditional text to every topic in sub-projects B and C so that they don't inadvertently show up in WebHelp via Search (even if not included in the TOC). With the TOC link that we use now, we just don't include the sub-project if it isn't a part of the Help.

I admit it's a hassle not to be able to do x-refs between projects for print output, and hyperlinks between projects are a pain to set up, but we're learning to live with it.

Anyway, maybe I'm misunderstanding how to use global linking? Or maybe what we're doing is best suited to our needs, and I just have to figure out a way to deal with print output?

[KevinDAmery]

** The two smaller projects (B and C) generate as Subsystems when we've got a link to them in the WebHelp TOC. This is ideal for us, because then our users can install them as Help plug-ins that blend in with the main Help when they buy licenses for those modules. If we imported those topics by global link, so far as I can tell, we have no way of generating them as self-contained Help chunks that can be added to the main Help at a later time.

From the main project, you would have to create a target that just references the sub-project content and apply conditions to exclude everything else: however, you can still open the smaller projects on their own and do a build there.

Example:
Main project = ProjectA.flprj
Sub project 1 = ProjectB.flprj
Sub project 2 = ProjectC.flprj

If you link ProjectB and ProjectC to ProjectA and needed to build just ProjectC's content, you would need to create a target that just referenced those topics and excluded everything else by condition (which would probably be a maintenance headache). However, a much simpler approach would be to simply open ProjectC.flprj directly and do a build there. Inside ProjectC there are no links to either of the other projects, so your build would only use ProjectC content.

[nsemple]

I am using Madcap Flare 7.1 and am facing the same issue discussed in this thread. It seems as though a lot of time has passed by since this posting was originally made, so I am hoping that Madcap has addressed the issue already and that I just haven't been able to figure it out.

I have four separate Help projects that I want to have merged into a single TOC for Microsoft Word/PDF Output.

Using the TOC in one of the projects, I have added TOC entries to merge the other project TOCs. It appears as though I can do this for other output types, such as WebHelp, but not for printed output types such as Microsoft Word. When I try to compile printed output using the merged TOC, the entries linking the external projects are ignored.

I would like to be able to add a TOC entry that links to an external Help project for printed output formats. In addition, I would like to be able to select a specific TOC from the external Help project that I want to be referenced for the merged TOC entry (our Help projects all contain more than one TOC file).

Does anyone know how to do this? I do not want to import the individual Help projects into a top-level project.

[lacastle]

I don't think this is possible yet, but you can submit a feature request - https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[nsemple]

Thanks Laura,

I already submitted a feature request. As an FYI to anyone else who is dealing with this issue...

I now have Flare 7.2 and this printed output functionality deficiency still exists in this latest version of the product.