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Virtual Topic Definition (.Hxv) File

  • Article

When authoring Help, your primary content resides within HTML files in your Help project. However, you can use XML-based virtual topic definition (.HxV) files to create virtual topics. This type of file associates attributes, index keywords, full-text search words, and other markup with Internet URLs and files compatible with Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.

You can author virtual topics in three different ways:

  • Unparsed (or standard), which includes files in the project by adding markup in the .HxV file

  • Parsed, which includes files in the project by adding markup directly into the XML data islands of topic files

  • Anchored, which adds searching and filtering capabilities to specific parts of a topic file associated to the project

Virtual topic markup for parsed and anchored virtual topics is defined in the XML data island for the topic it is part of. For more information, see Help XML Data Island Markup.

Example

The following example shows the basic structure of a virtual topic (.HxV) definition file.

Note

The file consists of tags, each of which contains one or more attributes.

Choose an attribute to see its corresponding topic.

Comments indicate which attributes are required.

Where applicable, defined choices are displayed in parentheses.

All attribute values must be enclosed in quotation marks.

As with all XML documents, the tags and attributes in this file are case-sensitive.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<!DOCTYPE VTopicSet SYSTEM "MS-Help://Hx/Resources/HelpVTopic.dtd">

<VTopicSet

   Id Attribute = ""

  DTDVersion Attribute = "1.0" <!-- Required -->

   FileVersion Attribute = ""

>

<VTopic

   Url Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

   Title Attribute = ""

   RLTitle Attribute = ""

   TOCTitle Attribute = ""

>

<Attr

   Name Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

   Value Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

/>

<Keyword

   Index Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

   Term Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

/>

<FTSText>

   <!-- Insert Full-Text Search text here. -->

</FTSText>

</VTopic>

<ParsedVTopic

   LocalFile Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

   Url Attribute = "" <!-- Required -->

/>

</VTopicSet>

See Also

Concepts

Help XML Data Island Markup