Wrong breadcrumbs for pages with same topic

Report · Jan 17, 2008

I have built a helpsystem via Robohelp 7.

When I use the same topic for several pages the breadcrumb gets incorrect.

An example:
The Book titles are: My Account / Create an Account / FAQ
The Page title is: What is metadata
And the topis is: What is metadata
...the breakcrumb is: My Account / Create an Account / FAQ / What is metadata (nothing wrong here).

But, if I use the same topis for another page:

Example:

The Book titles are: My Account / Account Settings / FAQ
The Page title is: What is metadata
And the topis is: What is metadata
...the breakcrumb is: My Account / Create an Account / FAQ / What is metadata ("Create an Account" should be "Account Settings"!!??).

Anyone who knows how to fix this?

Thanks in advance!!!

Report · Jan 17, 2008

Welcome to the forum.

I have just tested this and replicated the problem. It always shows the path of the first book where the topic appears.

Please report it as a bug.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

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Report · Jan 17, 2008

Hi eliasjosefsson and welcome to our community

In addition to what my fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter offered, how about a possible workaround?

One way you might work past this would be to create redirect topics for each page that appears in multiple places in the TOC. Essentially, you would never truly link to the page directly from the TOC. Instead, you would link to the redirect topic that would point at the page.

You might give that a try and see if it works. In thinking it through as I type this, I can see where it may fail. But you might try it with one or two pages and see if it works.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jan 17, 2008

Another thought occurs here as well.

If the redirect option fails, you might see if you can place the entire contents of the desired page inside a snippet. Then create multiple topics that you would link to from the TOC, and in each of the topics linked from the TOC, you simply insert the snippet?

Just thinking out loud... Rick

Report · Jan 17, 2008

Peter, are you sure that's a bug? In my experience, RH (X5.0.2) always synchronizes the topic to the uppermost TOC-linked instance (thereby necessitating the use of redirect pages as suggested by Rick). Breadcrumbs in RH7 apparently follow the same paradigm.

Good luck,
Leon

Report · Jan 17, 2008

On the basis Adobe have accepted it as one, yes. Probably the same cause but surely that is a bug too?

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Report · Jan 21, 2008

Since that was the same un-functionality in the HDK and Doc-to-Help products that I used before migrating to RH (in 1994?), I always assumed it to be an "undocumented feature" of all authoring tools.

Leon

Report · Jan 21, 2008

If Adobe manage to fix this I'll be impressed. I think it's more a problem with breadcrumbs than with RoboHelp. I think I'm right in saying that Flare has the same feature. The difficulty, of course, is how can the topic "know" which TOC path you navigated to get to it?

Report · Jan 21, 2008

Hi all

I just now tested one of my theories and it seemed to work out dandy! Just create a new topic for every TOC entry point. Create the topic you really want to see when each entry point is clicked, then select all of it and copy to the clipboard. Create a new snippet and paste the entire contents of that desired topic. Now insert only the snippet in each of the TOC entry point topics. The end result on my PC was that each TOC node correctly displayed the topic content (because it was a snippet). And the breadcrumb trail was correct for each (Because I used different topics).

Cheers all... Rick

Report · Jan 21, 2008

I think Paul has a good point! Neat solution Rick!

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Report · Nov 24, 2008

The snippet idea is a good solution. The issue for me, however, is I don't want 15 different topic files that all contain the same snippet. It not only confuses, it also increases the overall filesize of the help system.

I'd rather create one snippet page and point TOC pages to that.... all with keeping the breadcrumb functionality so that the TOC instance title is included as the breadcrumb.

Or, if Adobe cannot make that happen, then at least give me an automatic way to tell my RH project, "Hey, for these 25 TOC entries, use this snippet." Who wants to generate 25 additional empty pages just to house the snippet?

The only advantage to your approach is that the one snippet is single-sourced information.

Report · Nov 25, 2008

Going back to your original post, I'm thinking that the whole premise of presenting "What is metadata?" as a hierarchical topic in the TOC (and therefore in the breadcrumb trail) is flawed.

That is, keep this "reference" material out of the TOC entirely:
1. Create one "What is metadata?" topic.
2. Create a link to it from within the relevant topics.
3. Revisit the link to make it Display in auto-sizing popup (or a custom-sized popup).

(At least in RH X502, RH won't let you select anything but Display in frame at the initial linking process, so you have to do it in a second step.)

Actually, you could do this for your entire FAQ (one FAQ topic with bookmarks at each question, then you link to the bookmarks).

Good luck,
Leon