Do not create the indexTerms.html file when webhelp.show.indexterms.link==no

[chrispitude]

Currently, WebHelp always creates the indexTerms.html file, even if the webhelp.show.indexterms.link parameter is set to no.

In our situation, we have legacy <indexterm> elements in our content that we do not actively update. We set webhelp.show.indexterms.link==no to avoid publishing them. Unfortunately, the indexTerms.html file was still created and indexed by our corporate web portal's search engine, and so it still shows up in the search results for many customer queries (because it contains so many common terms by definition).

It would be useful if the WebHelp build could suppress the indexTerms.html file completely when webhelp.show.indexterms.link==no, as there is no way to navigate to it once the header link is removed.

We could delete the legacy <indexterm> elements from our content, but even then the indexTerms.html file is created with no entries, and so it would still be nice to suppress this useless file when webhelp.show.indexterms.link==no.

A testcase is included:

webhelp_index_topic_file.zip

(1.93 KiB) Downloaded 10 times

To run,

1. Publish the project.xml DITA-OT project file.

[julien_lacour]

Hi Chris,

I added your vote to the issue, as a workaround you can create an additional plugin that overrides the 'whr-create-indexterms-page' Ant target.
I already did such plugin, you can use it as a starting point:

com.oxygenxml.webhelp.responsive.custom.zip

(936 Bytes) Downloaded 9 times

If you want the indexterm page on some of your publications you will need to add a condition using the 'webhelp.show.indexterms.link' parameter.

Regards,
Julien

[chrispitude]

Perfect, thank you Julien!