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Working with Topics |
A topic is a single page in your help file that contains elements such as text or graphics. In a Word document, a new topic begins with a paragraph that is formatted with a style that is mapped to a Topic element. This paragraph is called a heading paragraph. By default, Help Producer uses Word’s build in paragraph styles Heading 1 through Heading 6 for this purpose. The topic itself begins with the text following the heading paragraph and ends just before the next heading paragraph.
First Heading <- A heading style, such as ‘Heading 1’
Topic text… <- Some text style
Second Heading <- A heading style, such as ‘Heading 2’
Topic text… <- Some text style
The table of contents for the help file is built automatically from the heading paragraphs. The level in the table of content is indicated through the TOC Level property of the style used. By default, the TOC level is mapped directly to the heading level, i.e. Heading 1 has a TOC level of 1, Heading 2 has a TOC level of 2, etc. This behavior is determined by the Style Mappings, which can be customized if necessary.
Each document must have at least one heading paragraph. The text before the first heading style is ignored, which is useful for suppressing title pages, table of contents, etc. The end of the document ends the last topic.