9.11 Providing full-text search (FTS) for HTML Help

For HTML Help, full-text search is created as part of compiling a .chm with HTML Help Workshop; see §9.14 Compiling and testing HTML Help. With default settings, you get FTS automatically when Mif2Go generates HTML Help.

Note:  The HTML Help FTS is built entirely by the Microsoft compiler, and stored in an undocumented binary format within the .chm file. Omni Systems cannot do anything about problems you encounter with its operation.

Omitting FTS

To prevent indexing for full-text search in HTML Help:

[MSHtmlHelpOptions]

; UseFTS = Yes (default) or No (affects Help Project File rewrite)

UseFTS = No

Specifying FTS in the .hhp file

The .hhp file for your project contains the setting for FTS, which Mif2Go includes by default while creating the .hhp file for you. If you create the .hhp some other way, you must make sure the .hhp file (not the Mif2Go configuration file) includes the following setting:

[OPTIONS]

Full-text search=Yes

Including topic titles in search results

For HTML Help to list the names of topics when a user clicks Search, you must specify titles for all topics, normally by assigning the Title property to the formats for headings at which you split FrameMaker files to create HTML Help topics. For example:

[HTMLParaStyles]

Heading1 = Split Title Contents

Heading2 = Split Title Contents

See §18.4.2 Specifying page titles for split or extract files.

Indexing for FTS in another language

If you are preparing HTML Help in another language, you must run the compiler, which builds the FTS index, in the target locale. See §9.14.3 Compiling in a different language.

Excluding a topic from FTS

Mif2Go excludes a topic from full-text search by changing the topic file extension to .xhtml, even though the file is not actually XHTML. Only files with names containing the string .htm* get indexed (by HTML Help Workshop) for full-text search in HTML Help.

To exclude content from full-text search in HTML Help, insert a Search marker with the value No in FrameMaker content you want excluded from search. The value in effect at the end of each split file determines what happens for that file. The value is reset to Yes at the start of each split file.

---

> 9 Generating Microsoft HTML Help > 9.11 Providing full-text search (FTS) for HTML Help