RoboHelp HTML Index question

[EEDSS]

I was wondering if it is possible to set up the Index in RoboHelp to Highlight the word in the Topic when its chosen? And, it would also be nice if it could jump to the word if it is a lengthly Topic. If anybody knows how to do this and if it is possible, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi EEDSS. You can achieve this by performing a text search but not via the index. The index is not designed to work this way as a topic may contain index keywords that do not exist in the actual topic text.

[Captiv8r]

Hi EEDSS

In addition to what Colum offered up, you CAN link an index term to the line where a word appears. You do this by inserting a bookmark at the location. Then link the index term to the location.

Note that if the location is near the bottom of the page, you will need to add paragraph marks at the bottom of the page to "scoot" the text up to a position to where it can correctly align with the top of the window. Further note that if you do this and your user prints the topic, an extra sheet or two of paper pops out of the printer as this blank area is "printed".

Cheers... Rick

[MergeThis]

To eliminate the extra sheets of paper mentioned by Rick, you could use the @media rule (a CSS2 standard) to identify what happens to all that blank space, and when.

1. Create a style for these lines (say, "blanklines").
2. In your CSS file, duplicate that style.
3. Surround the first one with "@media screen {" and "}".
4. Surround the second one with "@media print {" and "}".
5. In the style for the second one, add the line "visibility: hidden;".
6. Assign the style to all those blank lines.

See this tutorial for an @media coding example. As you'll see, you can use this rule to control how any of your HTML elements will print (different fonts for headings, no underline for hyperlinks, etc.). Although you might only use the media and print values, there are others available, like aural, braille, etc.

Of course, you might also want to assign the "Online" conditional tag to those blank lines, if you're going to generate Printed Doc. For your Printed Doc SSL, you'd select "NOT Online" for your Conditional Build Expression. (The @media rule only applies when a print driver is involved, so you need to eliminate them differently for generating Word output.)

Good luck,
Leon