When you use the multi-channel publishing feature of FrameMaker, you get several options that enable you to streamline online Help publishing.
Using the options in the Publish Options menu, you can avoid the traditional ways of having to define custom markers for pagination and topic naming. You can add Page Break markers to denote the topics that should be converted as separate Help topics, and define their topic names.
1)Click the heading text, and select Insert > Publish Markers > Apply Page Break Marker.
2)In the Page Break Marker dialog box, enter the topic title. The file name is automatically populated based on the title text that you enter.
For example, if you enter the topic title as FrameMaker Publish options, the file is named FrameMaker_Publish_options.htm.
However, you have the option to change the file name in the Filename text box.
You can also specify a marker to enforce that a page does not break at a defined location. For example, you require to keep two closely related headings on the same page. In this case, you specify a No Page Break Marker at the top of the second heading.
1)Click the heading text of the second heading.
2)Select Insert > Publish Markers > Apply No Page Break Marker.
The marker text for the newly created marker is <NoSplit>. This indicates that the selected heading will appear on the same page as the previous heading.
You can remove all the Page Break markers in a document.
1)Open the document from which you need to remove all the page break markers.
2)Select Insert > Publish Markers > Remove All Page Break Markers.
To create context-sensitive Help, you need to add markers in your documentation that the product developers can link to from the corresponding parts of the product. The CSH (context-sensitive help) Marker feature in FrameMaker allows you to apply TopicAlias markers in your documentation. The CSH markers are then used by the publisher to add anchors in the publish output. The publisher also creates a map file that the product developers use to link to the anchors in the documentation.
note: For best results, ensure that you are applying the map IDs to heading styles that you identified for pagination.
Context-sensitive Help markers are used in the following publish output formats:
•Responsive HTML5
•Microsoft HTML Help
1)Click to place the mouse cursor at the start of a paragraph text to insert the context-sensitive Help marker.
2)Select Insert > Publish Markers > Apply CSH Marker.
3)Enter the map ID and click OK.
When you create a CSH marker in a document, FrameMaker creates a TopicAlias marker with the marker text as the map ID that you specify.
important: You cannot use whitespaces or the following special characters for the marker text of a CSH marker: ~!@#$%^&*()+-={}|[]\\:\";'<>?,./
You apply CSH markers to specify context specific help location in your FrameMaker document. Next, you need to create a Help map file (with a .h extension). Your application developers use the map file to hook the specific parts of the application (for example, dialog boxes or menu items) to the corresponding help topics.
1)Add the CSH markers in the FrameMaker source.
2)Create a text file in any text editor and name the file as:
<source book or document name>.h
3)Place the map file in the FrameMaker source folder.
4)For each CSH marker that you apply in your document, you need to create one line item in the map file as follows:
#define <map ID> <map number>
map ID
Name that you specify for the CSH marker
map number
Unique numeric identifier that will be provided by the application developers. However, as a placeholder, you can provide any random number.
For reference, the FrameMaker publish procedure also creates a sample map file:
a)Run the publish procedure for your document.
b)In Windows Explorer, go to the output folder.
If your source content has CSH markers defined, a <source book or document name>.h file is created at the same folder level as the output folder.
Example: For the output of a book named framemaker-publisher.book, the map file is framemaker-publisher.h.
You can use this .h file as a reference to create your map file.
You need to create your map file in the same format as this .h file.
important: The <source book or document name>.h file is created at the same level as the output folder and not inside the output folder.
5)After you have added all the CSH markers to your map file, provide the map file to the product development team.
The product development team can use the unique identifiers that you have included in the file. Alternatively, the product team can change the identifiers, as required, and return the updated file.
6)Copy the updated map file to the FrameMaker source folder.
Ensure that the name of the file is <source book or document name>.h.
7)Run the publish procedure.
The CSH markers are now included as anchors in the published output. You can now test the product context-sensitive Help functionality.
To implement context-sensitive Help in an application, you need to include the CSH markers in the documentation as described above. In addition, your product team will also need to add functionality in the application. For a detailed description on how to include context-sensitive Help functionality in an application, see Context-sensitive Help information for developers in the Using RoboHelp guide.
1)Click on the paragraph text that you want to insert the index marker.
2)Select Insert > Publish Markers > Apply Index Marker.
3)Enter the index entry and click OK.
You can create dynamic HTML effects such as drop-down text and expanding text in your FrameMaker documents if you want to have the published online Help formats to have these options.
Use the drop-down text effect to provide alternative task options and basic conceptual topics, summarize the questions on an FAQ, and shorten nested procedures. Text that you mark as drop-down body is displayed in your Apply conditional tags. But the text appears online only when the user clicks the drop-down text caption on the Help page.
Similarly, you can use expanding text DHTML effect to display expanded definitions, key terms, or links to overview topics embedded in a paragraph. Expanding text requires an expanding text caption that contains the link and expanding text body that is displayed when a user clicks the expanding text link. Expanding text body is not displayed in PDF. It appears only in the Help page when a user clicks the text that contains the expanding text link.
These DHTML effects require two components: a caption and body. You apply the drop-down text effects to paragraphs and the expanding text effect to characters. When the drop-down text effect is created, two paragraph formats, DropDownCaption and DropDownBody, are added to the FrameMaker document. When the expanding text effect is created, two character formats ”ExpandingTextCaption and ExpandingTextBody” are added. These formats are imported to the RoboHelp project when you import the FrameMaker documents. The effects are visible in the created HTML topics.
If the HTML topic generated contains only the captions without the accompanying body formats, links are generated and visible in the HTML topic. If the HTML topic generated contains a text body without the corresponding captions, no links are generated. In addition, if a paragraph to which the drop-down text body format is applied is also specified for conversion to an autonumbered list, the list conversion is ignored.
1)Select the text or paragraph on which you want to place the drop-down text caption.
2)Select Insert > Publish Effects > DHTML Drop Down Caption.
3)Select the text that should appear as drop-down text in your online Help page.
4)Select Insert > Publish Effects > DHTML Drop Down Body.
1)Select the term or phrase on which you want to place the expanding text caption.
2)Select Insert > Publish Effects > DHTML Expanding Text Caption.
3)Select the text that should appear as expanding text in your online Help page.
4)Select Insert > Publish Effects > DHTML Expanding Text Body.