Inserting Title variable that refers to topic other than where variable resides

[DMilkes]

Still using RH9, but I think RH10 is going into our upcoming budget. I understand the Title variable in the Fields and Variables dialog refers to the title of the topic in which you are placing the variable. However, I would like to use a topic title reference in another topic, because it is likely the title will change and I only want to change it in one place and have it reflected automatically.

Here are two inadequate solutions I would reject:

• Dragging the topic name from the Project Manager and then changing the title of the referred topic: it does not change the reference text.
• Making a user defined variable: seems counterproductive because I will still be making one change too many.

Example: I have a topic called VIP PO Approval that is referring to the VIP PO Upload/Entry topic. I am putting hyperlinks from the Approval topic to the Upload/Entry topic, but the text of the links should come from the "Upload/Entry" Topic Title field. If the powers that be change the spelling of Upload/Entry (perhaps include spaces around the slash), I only want to change it in the properties of that topic or rename it in Project Manager (the point is, in one place only).

Does anyone know how to do this in RH9? Is there an enhancement in RH10?

Thank you.

[Peter Grainge]

It has always been the case that when you drag a topic from Project Manager to create a link in a topic, the text displayed is the Topic Title at the time. If you later manually changed the Topic Title, the link did not change. You can also drag a topic across to preselected text such as Click Here and the text will remain as Click Here even though it is pointing to My Topic. In that scenario, you would not want the text to change and the assumption is that is the case for all links, right or wrong.

I just tested Rh10 and dragging a topic to create a link uses the variable value at the time and changing it does not update the link, as I expected.

It may be possible through some sort of script but that is above my pay grade.

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@petergrainge

[Captiv8r]

I would add to Peter's response by saying this: When you drag and drop to create a link, what the link actually reads is dependent upon how you created the link. For example, if you select the text used to constitute the link, THEN drag to the selected text, the selected text is used instead of the Topic title. And sure, if you just drag the topic to an empty spot on the page, the Topic Title is used.

Sure, it seems like an extra step is involved, but with RoboHelp 10, I defined a variable and used the variable as my topic title. I then dragged the variable to the selected text to create the variable. Then I dragged the desired topic to the variable to create the link. All seemed to work just fine with the link text updating when the variable was changed

I think  any way you slice it you are going to have at least one extra step. But then again, anything that gives you more functionality tends to require an extra hoop or two, no? And on the up side, while an extra step is inovolved initially, you actually SAVE steps down the road. So overall, I'd say you are still in the benefit zone.

Cheers... Rick

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[Peter Grainge]

I see what you have done, nice one. The only bit I don't follow is "I then dragged the variable to the selected text" as why would you select any text?

What I did was create the variable as you said and then drag it to a topic, then select the variable and drag the topic to that.

The problem would be that you need a variable for each Topic Title.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Captiv8r]

True that on the need for a variable for each Topic Title. But dem's da breakz, no?

Why I did what I did was mostly out of habit. When facilitating classes I demonstrate how one can replace text with a variable. So I select the text, then drag the variable to it to make the replacement. Nothing appears to change. At first. Then you note that you are no longer able to select one or two characters in the text as it's now a variable.

Cheers... Rick

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[Guest]

This is not possible within Robohelp. I agree it would be handy to have more possibilities to link topic names, links to those topics, and the topics in the TOC.

However, with an intelligent text find/replace tool such as TextCrawler and some knowledge about regular expressions, you can find/replace only the applicable text within the topic files AND toc file with ease.

Things like

find

<a([^>]+)>Hello, world!</a>

replace with

<a$1>Hello, universe!</a>

[^>] means any character that isn't ">"

+ means one or more of these

() means remember what was found between the brackets

$1 means the contents that was found between the brackets

So, this replaces any "Hello, world" within a link with "Hello, universe", without changing where the link points to.

Note: this is how TextCrawler works, this explanation may or may not be valid for other find/replace tools.

If you are interested, I can elaborate. If so, please include the exact HTML text (complete lines) of the things you would like to find/replace, including how that topic is shown in the TOC (.hhc file)

[Captiv8r]

Hi Erwin

Sorry, but I'm more than a bit confused with your post. You seem to be claiming that what was described as a solution (and what I tested to be certain works before I posted it) simply isn't possible to achieve.

Perhaps you meant to say that it's not possible with certain versions of RoboHelp?

Cheers... Rick

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[Guest]

Sorry for the confusion

It was not a response to your post, but to the OP. What the OP wants (not using user variables) is impossible in RH AFAIK.

If only there was a general topic_title variable that would have a filename as input, and as value the title of the topic in that file...

Or is that possible in RH10? (I have 9) I thought it was only possible to have UDV in a title now, not the title of another topic as variable.

Depending on how many titles the OP needs to change, it might be less work to do a general find/replace than to create an UDV for each topic.

[Captiv8r]

Ahhh okay. True, there is no way to avoid using User Variables. No, RH10 doesn't offer using a filename as input. I'm not sure why one would want to as that wouldn't be very aesthetically pleasing.

Cheers... Rick

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[DMilkes]

FYI, I didn't say I wanted to display the file name. I want to display the Topic Title as in the screen shot. But thank you all for the feedback.

[Captiv8r]

I thought that was what you were saying when you wrote:

If only there was a general topic_title variable that would have a filename as input, and as value the title of the topic in that file...

Guess I misunderstood that.

Cheers... Rick

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[Guest]

The filename shouldn't be visible, of course it's an input.

If Adobe would extend the title variable from

<?rh-variable_start name="title" format="default" value="Topic Title" ?>

to

<?rh-variable_start name="title" file="OtherTopic.html" format="default" value="Topic Title" ?>

If the file parameter would be empty, the title would point to the current topic/file, if not, it would point to another topic/file, and fill in the title (not the file name!) of that other topic as output.

I'm not sure what would be aesthetically unpleasant about that...

EDIT: I see you have responded while I was typing this