Can you print a glossary?

[Jessa]

I want to review all my glossary entries. Can I print it? Export it? Somehow just print the list of terms?

[I'm also anticipating that internal users will want this in the future. However, right now, I just want it for editing. A spreadsheet, or a table is fine. It doesn't need to be customer-ready, just readable. I'm in Flare 5.]

[GregStenhouse]

The glossary file (under \Project\Glossaries) is an XML file, and can be opened in any program that can handle XML (notepad, Word/Excel 2003 or higher etc). I tried a quick test, and opening in Word and then printing gives quite good results.

If you want to handle this in Flare, then create a separate topic, and insert a glossary proxy. Then you can build a PDF or Word target with just that topic.

Cheers
Greg

[SteveS]

...and welcome to the forums, Jessa.

[Jessa]

Thank you, Greg!

I have another question about inserting glossary terms: Can I have text in my topic that links to a glossary entry but doesn't match the text of the glossary term?

We have several data points that appear in multiple places with the same name but are calculated differently based on the place. Therefore, we would like "X" in the topic to link to "Y" glossary entry. When you want to insert a glossary term, do you have to insert the name of that glossary term?

If you can think of another forum section where I should ask, please let me know.

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Just to follow up, I got two massive errors in Flare when I tried to insert a proxy. There are a lot of reasons that could be happening. However, on the upside, glossaries open in Excel perfectly! I just thought I would pass that on.

[SteveS]

I don't think you can do that.

Even if you try and insert a glossary term link, Flare uses the actual word you are linking to create the glossary link. If the word is not a glossary term it asks you to create a definition for the word/ term. You could create an identical definition for both terms, but I don't think that's what you want to do.

[GregStenhouse]

I have another question about inserting glossary terms: Can I have text in my topic that links to a glossary entry but doesn't match the text of the glossary term?

In short, no. The glossary term has to match in the term in the topic. There are a couple of possible workarounds I can think of:
1) Have multiple terms for one definition. Under Project>Glossaries, open your glossary, double click a term, and then enter one term per line in the Terms box.
2) If you only have a limited number of glossary terms, you may be better off using standard popups or expanding text, or topic popups.

IMHO the real power behind a glossary is the option in the Target: Glossary Term Conversion: Convert first occurrence of term. This definitely relies on terms matching.

[LTinker68]

And make sure you submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx. Others have asked for the ability to do something similar, although the common example is to be able to link the plural of the word to the singular form of the word in the glossary (e.g., have "books" linked to the glossary term "book"). The more people who request a feature, the more likely MadCap is to add the feature sooner rather than later.

Another possible workaround to Greg's is to create a glossary term and have its definition say "see X" where X is a different glossary term. So a glossary term of H2O could say "see Water" and the user then goes to Water in the glossary. I'd only recommend that, though, if you have the glossary pane but don't link the glossary terms in the topics. If you did it as a link in the topic then they'd read "see Water" and they'd have to manually go to the glossary pane to see what water is.

You can also set up synonyms so that if the user enters a word in the search pane that is a synonym for something else, then topics related to the correct term will be returned. Not what you're looking for regarding the glossary, but if you're afraid users will try to search on a word that isn't in the glossary or used elsewhere in the project, then you can at least direct them to the appropriate topic(s) using the synonym feature.

[Jessa]

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied. This glossary is a beast.
We have 250+ values that can appear on our reports and we have them all defined in the glossary for "easy" insertion to the help topic for the reports where those values appear.

I entered an enhancement request.