Modifying the conditional build expression in RoboHelp using Extendscript - extendscript

I'm trying to automate a process for our documentation team. They have a pretty big batch of framemaker files across several books and use RoboHelp to generate EclipseHelp for two different versions of our project.
Each framemaker file has the appropriate tags set to indicate which version a particular piece of documentation applies to. Currently the writers modify the conditional build expression to specify the correct set of tags and run File->Generate->EclipseHelp each time. I can run the generation process just fine, but I can't figure out how to change which tags it's using.
I've read through RoboHelp's scripting guide and the only references I can find to Conditional Build Tags is the ability to create and delete them. I can't find any references to Conditional Build Expressions. Does anyone know any way to modify it from a script? Alternatively, if someone can suggest a different way of organizing RoboHelp/Framemaker that is more conducive, I'm all ears, though I have basically zero familiarity with either.

The Conditional Build Expression forms form of your EclipseHelp Single Source layout. As such your script needs to refer to the tags there.

I'm going to answer with what I found - even though it's only a partial answer - just in case it can help someone, or possibly give someone enough to figure out a more proper answer.
Basically I found that each Single Source Layout has a corresponding *.ssl file. If your layout is called OnlineHelp, it will be (in my experience) OnlineHelp.ssl and will be in the same directory as your .xpj file. The ssl file is just a bunch of xml and has some number of sections. One of the sections will have the same name as the content category where you would go in the UI to change the Conditional Build Expression. In that section is an element named "BuildExpression". Set that to whatever you need and reopen your RoboHelp project. It's a bit of a hack, but I set up a groovy script to do that before running my ExtendScript and it gets the job done.

Related

How to specify the items in reference list using BibTeX? ChemPhysChem LaTeX requirement

I'm revising a manuscript for ChemPhysChem. They just provided a very simple templet here. However, I have some problems meeting the requirement:
Please follow our house style for references for example: [1] X. Y.
Name, A. B. Name, J. Abbr. 2016, 5, 111-120.
This kind of reference hides the title, and I can not find an existing style to meet the need.
I am using the following latex script:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[sorting=none, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{ref_r.bib}
What do I need to do to solve the problem? Do I really need to build a new .bst file? Could anyone share their experience on submitting manuscripts on ChemPhysChem using LaTeX?
Don't use biblatex for journal submissions unless your publisher explicitly states that they do accept it. While it is a nice and flexible tool, biblatex is not yet the standard.
Just follow the instructions from the template and use
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%alternatively you may use
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{mymanuscript.bib}
%and send the .bib file along with your manuscript
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Don't worry if the resulting style might be a bit different from their requirement, they won't use it anyway but convert your source files with their pipeline.
I changed to my latex using BibTeX back, and built a cpc.bst file for ChemPhysChem using the following command with the help of the youtube video:
latex makebst
It would not be that hard to create the bibliography style file using the guide of the above-mentioned video.
And the result looks like
this.

Storing and retrieving files in Blockly Web

I want to use Blockly to do some calculations, and then generate text files (as opposed to exporting code to JavaScript, Python, PHP, etc.)
I can’t see an obvious way to create my own blocks to do this in Blockly, so using AppInventor (Version: nb168), I got storing and retrieving files to work, in a crude test app on my Android tablet.
In AppInventor/Designer mode, clicking Storage/File creates a “Non-visible component for storing and retrieving files. Use this component to write or read files on your device.”
Then, in AppInventor/Blocks mode, clicking the “File1” icon gives access to 7 “file type blocks”, e.g. AppendToFile, Delete, ReadFrom, SaveFile, etc.
Is it possible to create similar “file type blocks” to use in Blockly Web?
I have limited programming knowledge, so would appreciate simple answers, please.
Thanks, Pete.
Andrew N Marshall from Google/Blockly has told me this:
"This is absolutely possible ...as long as you willing to work within the browser's security restrictions. The resulting files will be need to be manually "downloaded" one at a time, rather than written directly to the user's file system.
... I would start understanding what JavaScript functions are available to you. Attempt to construct a string and save it via a download dialog...
That means the "file" contents are really just a string in memory, a JavaScript variable. We have lots of "Text" blocks that can do a variety of operations on strings. If those are enough, you'll only need one new block to identify the string variable and initiate the download process.
Otherwise, you'll need to think about what blocks you want, and how they operate. They may operate on a specific variable in the JavaScript VM, not necessary exposed as a variable to Blockly.
Either way, you'll need to learn how to create a block and a Blockly app. We have a code lab that will walk you through all the steps. You'll learn how each block generates a string of code, and in your case, that code will be related to the download code I mentioned earlier."
So I'll press on - I just wanted to be sure my goal is actually achievable before I started.
Thanks, Pete.

Modx script after package installation

I need to write a plugin that needs to create table in database and some setting from installation form. I can easily create form but I have difficulty to run the script after installation to read options and create table. Is it possible at all to run such simple script or maybe you need to create everything like for example models, vehicles and so on?
I would appreciate if anyone could give me directions how to do it. Modx documentation is not clear about this and https://github.com/splittingred/Doodles/tree/production sample repo contains multiple elements I'm not familiar with and I believe don't need at all
Typically you'd use a resolver to run code after the install.
While in the question comments the setup options are discussed, the package attributes there are actually executed to generate the setup options form, not to process the results.
The docs are a tad dated (mostly the screenshots), but Creating a 3rd party build script explains the different parts of a build script, and what they're for, with a fair bit of examples.
The piece you're looking for is this:
$vehicle->resolve('php',array(
'source' => $sources['resolvers'] . 'setupoptions.resolver.php',
));
You'll need to have a $vehicle (perhaps from a category or other object you're adding to the build) and the file in the provided location. Inside the resolver file you can use $object->xpdo as an instance of the modX class to do your thing.

ExpressionEngine file manager - default to thumbnail view

At the moment when you go to select an image inside an entry using the EE default file manager, the default view is 'show files as a list'.
Is there a way to show the thumbnail view as the default?
At this point I would be happy with a core hack.
I don't usually use the file manager for sites (much prefer Assets) but this client had a tight budget
I've wondered about doing this in the past as well - turns out it's pretty simple. Open up ee_filebrowser.js and search for the first instance of a("#dir_choice").val(). Immediately after that add this:
; a("#view_type").val('thumb').change();
Make sure you include the leading ;.
I've only tested this in Safari but I can't see why it wouldn't work everywhere. Incidentally, JS beautifier makes this sort of thing infinitely easier.
I don't recommend hacking core for any reason and I suggest it should be avoided at all cost.
With that said, I will provide what I've found out just the same.
Looks like the following files, in EE 2.5.3, are what you'd want to edit:
/themes/javascript/compressed/jquery/plugins/ee_filebrowser.js
/system/expressionengine/libraries/File_field.php
I found these doing a file search in my text editor for view_type which was from the id of that dropdown. The javascript is minified so you'd probably want to un-minify it and then rewrite the part which handles the switch. I'm not the best JS/jQuery person out there, and un-minified js makes it a bit harder too so, I won't offer any more than what I've found so far.
Consider pulling out the parts parts from the two files if you aren't great with js and maybe start a new post tagged accordingly.
Also note: there might be more to this than just those two files so consider this answer a start and nothing more.

Any way in Expression Engine to simulate Wordpress' shortcode functionality?

I'm relatively new to Expression Engine, and as I'm learning it I am seeing some stuff missing that WordPress has had for a while. A big one for me is shortcodes, since I will use these to allow CMS users to place more complex content in place with their other content.
I'm not seeing any real equivalent to this in EE, apart from a forthcoming plugin that's in private beta.
As an initial test I'm attempting to fake shortcodes by using delimited strings (e.g. #foo#) in the content field, then using a regex to pull those out and pass them to a function that can retrieve the content out of EE's database.
This brings me to a second question, which is that in looking at EE's API docs, there doesn't appear to be a simple means of retrieving the channel entries programmatically (thinking of something akin to WP's built-in get_posts function).
So my questions are:
a) Can this be done?
b) If so, is my method of approaching it reasonable? Or is there something stupidly obvious I'm missing in my approach?
To reiterate, my main objective here is to have some means of allowing people managing content to drop a code in place in their content that will be replaced with channel content.
Thanks for any advice or help you can give me.
Here's a simple example of the functionality you're looking for.
1) Start by installing Low Replace.
2) Create two Global Variables called gv_hello and gv_goodbye with the values "Hello" and "Goodbye" respectively.
3) Put this text into the body of an entry:
[say_hello]
Nice to see you.
[say_goodbye]
4) Put this into your template, wrapping the Low Replace tag around your body field.
{exp:low_replace
find="[say_hello]|[say_goodbye]"
replace="{gv_hello}|{gv_goodbye}"
multiple="yes"
}
{body}
{/exp:low_replace}
5) It should output this into your browser:
Hello
Nice to see you.
Goodbye
Obviously, this is a really simple example. You can put full blown HTML into your global variable. For example, we've used that to render a complex, interactive graphic that isn't editable but can be easily dropped into a page by any editor.
Unfortunately, due to parse order issues, EE tags won't work inside Global Variables. If you need EE tags in your short code output, you'll need to use Low Variables addon instead of Global Variables.
Continued from the comment:
Do you have examples of the kind of shortcodes you want to support/include? Because i have doubts if controlling the page-layout from a text-field or wysiwyg-field is the way to go.
If you want editors to be able to adjust layout or show/hide extra parts on the page, giving them access to some extra fields in the channel, is (imo) much more manageable and future-proof. For instance some selectfields, a relationship (or playa) field, or a matrix, to let them choose which parts to include/exclude on a page, or which entry from another channel to pull content from.
As said in the comment: i totally understand if you want to replace some #foo# tags with images or data from another field (see other answers: nsm-transplant, low_replace). But, giving an editor access to shortcodes and picking them out, is like writing a template-engine to generate ee-template code for the ee-template-engine.
Using some custom fields to let editors pick and choose parts to embed is, i think, much more manageable.
That being said, you could make a plugin to parse the shortcodes from a textareas content, and then program a lot, to fetch data from other modules you want to support. For channel entries you could build out of the channel data library by objectiveHTML. https://github.com/objectivehtml/Channel-Data
I hear you, I too miss shortcodes from WP -- though the reason they work so easily there is the ubiquity of the_content(). With the great flexibility of EE comes fewer blanket solutions.
I'd suggest looking at NSM Transplant. It should fit the bill for you.
There is also a plugin called Shortcode, which you can find here at
Devot-ee
A quote from the page:
Shortcode aims to allow for more dynamic use of content by authors and
editors, allowing for injection of reusable bits of content or even
whole pieces of functionality into any field in EE

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