Adding breadcrumbs to CHM Help

[AJOwens]

oXygen 14.2, DITA-OT CHM transformation.

I've tried setting args.breadcrumbs to Yes, and specifying an html fragment for args.hdr (with some test text), but I'm not seeing breadcrumbs in the output. What else can I try?

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

The args.breadcrumbs parameter never really worked in the DITA-OT transformations (Oxygen performs the DITA transformations using the DITA-OT toolkit from directory [Oxygen-install-dir]\frameworks\dita\DITA-OT). There was a DITA-OT plugin for the Windows Help CHM format that adds breadcrumb links to the HTML pages but it was not updated for several years.

We added two-level breadcrumbs links to the HTML pages in the DITA Webhelp transformation that comes with Oxygen. An example of Webhelp output is the online Oxygen User Manual. However these breadcrumbs links are only available in the Webhelp output, not the CHM output. If you want to adapt and integrate the code for the breadcrumb links for the plain HTML output I can give you more details about where you can find the code for the breadcrumb links of the Webhelp output.


Regards,
Sorin

[AJOwens]

Thanks for the reply.

WebHelp is our main output, and the breadcrumbs there work well. I'd have to double-check, but I don't think args.breadcrumbs has any effect on the WebHelp output. If that's true, it would be worth a note in the documentation.

We also deliver in CHM format, but there's no urgency to solve this because we already have DITA2Go transformations. We're migrating to oXygen, so we'll have to figure out the DITA-OT breadcrumbs eventually. Maybe they'll be fixed before I get around to investigating!

[sorin_ristache]

Hello,

The args.breadcrumbs parameter has no effect, in the CHM transformation, in the Webhelp transformation or in other DITA transformations. The Webhelp transformation is contributed to DITA-OT by Oxygen and implements the breadcrumbs regardless of the value of this parameter.

AFAIK this parameter never worked in DITA-OT. However it would be great if it is fixed. Anyway I can't promise that we, the Oxygen team, will look into it in the near term.


Regards,
Sorin

[Franky]

I'd very much appreciate having breadcrumb trails in CHM output.
Does Syncro Soft have any plans to implement this in the near future?
If not, I'd like to accept what Sorin offered in his last reply (about 4 years ago):

If you want to adapt and integrate the code for the breadcrumb links for the plain HTML output I can give you more details about where you can find the code for the breadcrumb links of the Webhelp output

Would this task be very difficult? I am not XSL-savvy, but perhaps I can give it a try.

Frank

[Radu]

Hi Frank,

We do not have any plans to add support for breadcrumbs to CHM output.
You can probably look into how we create the breadcrumbs in our WebHelp output but you would need quite a good amount of XSLT knowledge for this.
Or you can try to hire a DITA consultant to customize the CHM output for you.

Regards,
Radu

[Franky]

Thank you, Radu, for your reply.
Frank