Document! X 2022
Design the Content / Editions And Versions Fundamentals
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    Editions And Versions Fundamentals
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    Define Editions for multiple Browser Help Outputs (e.g. for Free, Standard, and Professional variants of a software product)

    If you are using Single Sourcing features to generate multiple Browser Help outputs from your project, you should define an Edition for each Build Profile that generates Browser Help output to enable your users to switch between the different Browser Help outputs:

    1. Right-click on the Editions and Versions node in the Project Explorer and select Edit from the Context Menu.
    2. The Editions and Versions Editor opens.
    3. Select the Editions page.
    4. Click the  toolbar button to add a new Edition.
    5. Define an appropriate ID and Caption for the Edition. Note that the ID value is used in generated help URLs.
    6. Select the Build Profile that generates the Browser Help output for this Edition.

    When Building and Publishing, the Browser Help output for each Edition is published to a URL specific to the Edition. When your Browser Help outputs are built and published, end users of the Browser Help are able to use the "Edition" selector to switch between the documentation for the different Editions.

    If you are not already using Publishing features to publish your generated outputs, it is highly recommended that you do so when using the Editions and Versions functionality. Using the built in Publishing features ensures that your Browser Help output is published to the correct path necessary for the Editions and Functionality to work correctly.
    Switching between different Editions and Versions in the generated output requires that you publish your Browser Help output to an intranet or internet URL. Editions and Versions functionality does not work when you are viewing content saved to a local drive.

    Define an initial Version if you want end users in future to be able to switch between documentation versions (e.g for a 1.0 version of a software product)

    If you would like to publish multiple chronological versions of your documentation (e.g. to support multiple different versions of an application), you should define a new Version entry each time you publish a new version of the related application:

    For the initial published version of the documentation:

    1. Right-click on the Editions and Versions node in the Project Explorer and select Edit from the Context Menu.
    2. The Editions and Versions Editor opens.
    3. Select the Versions page.
    4. Click the  Create a new Version toolbar button to add the first Version.
    5. Type an ID and Caption for the new Version (e.g. 1.0).
    6. Select the This is the current Version option.

    When building and Publishing, the Browser Help output for each Edition is published to a URL specific to Version 1.0. At this point, with just a single published version of the documentation, users do not see a "Version" selector in the documentation. But you still need to define the initial Version entry so that the Versions functionality is enabled in the generated output for the future (see below).           

    Define a new Version (e.g. for a 2.0 version of a software product)

    1. Right-click on the Editions and Versions node in the Project Explorer and select Edit from the Context Menu.
    2. The Editions and Versions Editor opens.
    3. Select the Versions page.
    4. Click the  toolbar button to add the new Version.
    5. Type an ID and Caption for the new Version (e.g. 2.0).
    6. Select the This is the current Version option.
    7. Select the previous Version from the list (e.g. 1.0) and select the This Version is locked for publishing option. This prevents you from accidentally republishing the 1.0 copy of the documentation in future.

    When building and Publishing, the Browser Help output for each Edition is published to a URL specific to Version 2.0.

    Users of the 2.0 documentation now see a "Version" selector allowing them to switch between the 1.0 and 2.0 Version documentation.

    Users of the 1.0 documentation also see a "Version" selector. This happens automatically thanks to the updated Editions and Versions configuration file shared by both 1.0 and 2.0, and does not require that the 1.0 documentation is modified or republished.