See Also Confusion

[Guest]

Apparently I'm not understanding how the See Also works.

Here's the situation...I have a TOC Book called Commvault. Within Commvault are a few different
topics, all with commvault in the title.

The problem is, if someone searches for comvault (no extra M). No results are found.

So I thought, if I put the word comvault in the See Also along with Topics For: that are associated
with commvault, that if someone searched for comvault, the topics I included would show up.

Looks like I'm wrong?

Any ideas on how to handle spelling variations and send people to the right place?

Hope that makes sense :)

Thanks
Doug

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Doug.

See also works by assigning a keyword to a topic and then using the Insert > See Also navigational control to assign the keyword to another topic. It works in much to the same way to a related topics link except by using a keyword rather than a topic title. Basically you need a button in your topic assigned to the See Also keyword. It has nothing to do with the search or index.

Just a thought but you could assign the incorrectly spelt and correctly spelt keyword to the index and link comvault to commvault in the index. That way if they mispell the keyword they would be naviagted to the correct spelling and the list of topics.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Colum and Doug

Sorry Colum, but your explanation confuses me a bit. You seem to be partially correct, but it falls apart (for me, anyway) when you say "and then using the Insert > See Also navigational control to assign the keyword to another topic.".

Just in case it will help, please allow me to explain it a different way.

See Also functionality does indeed rely upon having a keyword defined. In earlier versions of RoboHelp, you defined them by changing the view of the Index. So you displayed the Index designer, then changed the view from Index to See Also by clicking the drop-down found in the upper left corner of the Index designer. RoboHelp 7 changes that playing field by listing See Also as a pseudo folder among the other pseudo folders in the Project view.

So once you get the See Also keyword design view up, it works in much the same manner as the Index Design view. You add See Also keywords there and assign topics to them as desired.

Once you have one or more See Also keywords added, you are then able to insert See Also controls into topics. So you insert the control, then point at the desired See Also keyword. At run time, when the user clicks the See Also control, the topics assigned to the keyword are listed. However, the control is smart. If it exists inside a topic that is part of the list associated with the keyword, that topic isn't listed among the links, (After all, it's being displayed!)

Here's where the beauty of the See Also kicks in. Perhaps you add a new topic and associate it to a See Also keyword. That's all you have to do! Any topic using a control pointing to that keyword will display the new topic as a result. If you had used a Related Topics control, you would have had to visit each and every topic using the control and update the control in order for the new topic to appear.

Cheers all... Rick

[MergeThis]

Doug's initial post said "The problem is, if someone searches for comvault (no extra M). No results are found."

Doug, if users "scroll down" to comvault (no extra M) in the Index, they'll obviously see commvault, and there's no problem.

If, however, you're expecting the See Also to help users in the actual Search function, that just ain't gonna happen! Index and Search are two entirely different areas, and do not share this type of data.


Good luck,
Leon

[RoboWizard]

Hi Leon

Assuming RoboHelp 7 is being used here, (I'm not seeing anything indicative of version) one actually could influence this behavior in Search, by using the new "Synonym" function.

In RoboHelp HTML 7, if you click File > Project Settings... > Advanced... button, you will see the "Advanced Settings for Localization" dialog. RoboHelp 7 adds a new tab here called "Synonyms". Here, you can specify one word that, if typed as a search term by the user, points to the other.

Cheers... Rick