Print Auto-Sizing/Custom Size Popups in Printed Documentation

[LarryTX]

Our official documentation is online documentation produced in RH8/TCS2. However, as a government agency, we are required to produce printed copies of our documentation to satisfy Open Records Requests, court orders, and such. We make extensive use of popups to display lists of codes, forms, and some screen shots. Is there any way to print such popups using the Single Source Printed Documentation selection? I can't seem to find a way to do that. Without those popups printed, the documentation is critically incomplete.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

These are topics within their own right, no?

I would simply ensure they were added when you configure your Printed Output SSL. My good friend Peter may need to confirm this, but I believe you would do this looking at the Print Document Content dialog (the second one presented in the wizard) and enabling the "Show all topics" option. Enable that and ensure you add the desired topics to the Chapter layout side where appropriate.

Cheers... Rick

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[LarryTX]

Thanks Captiv8r, but when I tried that, the popup pages don't show. For instance, in the dialog below, each of the topics under Tax Collections has multiple popups, but they aren't available in the list.

But, RH appears to consider the popups to be topics because they appear in the topics list.

Go figure!

[Captiv8r]

Hello again

Well the feature doesn't work as I thought it did then. Sorry for leading you down a wild goose chase.

I would then suggest using the ability to create multiple TOCs. Duplicate your TOC and edit the copy to include links to the popup topics. Then point at the revised TOC in the printed docs layout.

Cheers... Rick

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[RoboColum_n_]

Can we be clear on what you mean by "popups". I am guessing that you are using Text Only Popups? If so, there is no way to include these in the Word file. A way around this though would be to have each popup as a separate topic that you link to and display in a popup. As it is a topic in its own right, you can select it to be included in your printed documentatin. Others I've known use this approach have kept all these popup topics in a separate folder. This way when you set the properties of your Printed Documentation SSL you can navigate to that folder and include all the popup topics. just click in the drop down (see below).

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The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[RoboColum_n_]

Doh! There I go treading on Rick's toes

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The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Captiv8r]

Hi Colum

No problem. Just a hint for the future and for reading tea leaves on the forum. The main clue was when LarryTX said Auto Sizing/Custom Size popups. That's a feature totally related to separate topics used as popups.

But you did make a valid point with the Text-Only popups.

Cheers... Rick

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[LarryTX]

Thanks Colum. They are not "text-only" popups. They are independent pages/topics many of which have images (screenshots, scanned forms, etc.) and others have tables embedded. They are linked as "Auto-Sizing" popups through the hyperlink dialog. As I replied to Captiv8r, the popups do not show up in the normal "Organize your topics ..." dialog. I had never thought of adding my popups folder to it. That should work.

[LarryTX]

Thanks guys, With your suggestions, I discovered that I could use the drop-down that normally has TOC in it to select my "popups" folder. From there, I could add the popup topics to the right side. Now, I'm wondering why they put the "Show all topics" checkbox on the dialog box. No matter, I discovered how to use the dropdown thanks to both of you.

[Peter Grainge]

I'm late on parade but hopefully this will help.

In the print dialog you can add topics from the TOC or you can select a folder and add topics from there as you have found. So what is Show All about you ask. In the folders you will only see topics that have not been excluded by the build expression, what Show All does is allow you to see all topics including the excluded ones. You can add excluded topics to the layout but they will not appear in the printed document. At that point people usually ask what use is that? It is actually very useful. Let's say there are just three topics. To start with perhaps you can only see topic one and topic two because topic three is excluded by the build expression. By using Show All you can add topic three to the list of topics to be printed. On this pass it will not print but next time you don't apply the build expression so it will print. One layout, multiple outputs according to the build expressions you use. Quite useful I suggest.

See Printed Documentation on my site for more information.

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@petergrainge