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Cross-References Broken In RoboHelp 10 Output

Community Beginner ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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We are using FrameMaker 11 to author our documentation. We have some cross-reference links that do not work when the FrameMaker book is imported into RoboHelp. Upon import, the href information is not included in the link in the HTML code. The text looks like a link, however. When the help is generated, the text is not a link.  The following is an example of a non-functioning link:

see <a>Link</a>.</p>

Here is an example of a cross-reference that is functioning correctly:

<a href="#XREF_90399_Heading_Text">Link</a>

There are no errors in FrameMaker. The cross-reference is updating correctly in FrameMaker. In addition, when a PDF is made form the same book, the cross-reference works in the PDF.

Troubleshooting steps I have taken:

  • I have tried going to MIF and back for both the source and target documents.
  • I have recreated the cross-reference and marker.
  • I have tried linking to a heading cross-reference marker, as well as a manually create cross-reference marker.
  • I have renamed the file.
  • I have renamed the marker.
  • I have used different cross-reference formats.
  • I recreated the file by copying all the text to Notepad and pasting the text back into a fresh FrameMaker file.

None of the steps I have attempted have corrected the issue for the cross-reference I focused my troubleshooting on. I hope that someone can point me in the right direction to correct this issue.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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It's a bug that has to do with the length of the path to your FM docs - shorten up the path & you'll see they start to work in RH

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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I have shorten the file name and the heading that the cross-reference points to. It doesn't help. The other cross-references that point to documents in an equally long path work. The only difference is that that the cross-reference is pointing to a separate file that is in the same directory and the other file I am comparing against has a cross reference pointing to content within the same document. Does RoboHelp not support cross-references from one document to another when files are on a network? Copying our whole library locally to shorten paths for publishing isn't an option.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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It does, but the total path length to a xref is limited to around 25 characters or so - I've never played around enough with it to exactly determine the max length. See this thread for more discussion - http://forums.adobe.com/message/5001958#5001958

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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After trying to get the paths short enough, I copied the problematic files to my desktop and build a book in the same folder. Even after that, the same issue exists. The file name is 6 characters long including the .fm extension and the cross reference marker name is three characters. I don't think I can get the file paths much shorter.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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And you updated the book in FM first in the new location before importing? I'd try something really short off the c:\ root directly - your desktop (depending on the version of Windows) is still a long path you know.

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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I am in Windows 7. I moved the book and the files to my c:\ drive root. I updated the book and still have the same issue. It is very strange.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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are some working & others not?

There were reports of a bug that had to do with xrefs that pointed back to earlier positions within the file - references like "See xxx on page yyy" were supposed by the Conversion Settings to end up as "See xxx" would get a mix of ones that were correct & ones that weren't.

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013

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In the book I am currently working in, I only have one of these troublesome cross-references. We have seen the same issue in other books though. There doesn't seem to be any real common thread between them that I can identify and there doesn't seem to be anything "wrong" with the cross-reference or the related files.

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 25, 2013 Jan 25, 2013

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We found that the path lengths did resolve some of our issues. I  still have one cross-reference that refuses to behave.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 27, 2013 Mar 27, 2013

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We continue to have issues with cross-references being dead in RoboHelp output. We have placed the FrameMaker files on C: as well as the RoboHelp project. Does anyone have any additional suggestions?

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Community Expert ,
Mar 27, 2013 Mar 27, 2013

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@Peter - when you get a chance, can you move this one into the FM Integration forum?

@ASnyder28 - The RH project should have already been on C:\ (best practices advises c:\projects\{project_name}\ as a structure). What's the path length to the remaining busted link? There seems to be an invisible limit of under 35 characters (no spaces either) to these things. You may have to relink the xref in FM first before sucking it into a new project.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 28, 2013 Mar 28, 2013

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I have been trying everything I can think of to move the files around to resolve the issue. 35 characters is very disappointing. Is this for the file and cross reference or the whole file path? I am not sure how you are going to be able to link from one Framemaker file to another, including a cross-reference name (especially when you can use heading for the cross-reference name) with a limitation like this.  We also have a large library with many directories. We utilize single sourcing, so some files are in completely other directories from the file that is cross-referencing to it. From what you are telling me, it sounds like we no longer have the ability to use cross-references from one file to another in our library structure. Are you saying that all cross references basically need to be in the same file to allow cross references to work properly in RoboHelp? We moved from a WebWorks solution and we never had any issues with our links.

What I don't understand is the marker is in the destination file in the converted RoboHelp files, but the link is completely missing the <a href="#XREF_name ofmarker"> code in the cross-reference link. When I go in and manually link the cross-reference in RoboHelp, it works. This seems like a bug. I think having a 35 character limit on a filepath, filename, and cross-reference name is not going to work for anyone that has any sort of complex directory structure with multiple authors, sharing content and since it isn't a limitation of HTML, I don't see why this functions this way. Manually linking isn’t a reasonable option for us. We have a publishing system that publishes all of our output. We have hundreds of files that are generated automatically.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 28, 2013 Mar 28, 2013

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Oh I'd say it's a bug all right - the more people complain about it, the better chance it has of being addressed. If you have support, contact Adobe Support and hassle them. If not, file a bug report.

I ran across it in an earlier version of TCS but it took me some time to run down the cause & even then, I haven't identified the invisible limit exactly - I know it's around 35 characters (that's total path and .fm file name length), but it could be less.

Just like you, I've got lots of folder structure to my content - I use the "master book of books" concept to suck in around 60 sub-books into RH (by import; linking in earlier versions would crash). I had always noticed that some of the xrefs that I was sure were present & working in FM were busted in the resulting RH WebHelp output, but didn't have enough time to chase it down. It was when I was looking closely at a page of "what's new" notes that I was writing that I saw some xrefs work & others not all on the same page - that got me digging into the HTML code where I saw the malformed href= links. Tracing it back led me to believe it had to do with some really long paths that I was sort of stuck with until I could move the entire load of them into a shorter path name. Once I did that, they all seemed to clean up.

Another poster with a thread almost identical to this one has sent me their files to play with because shortening the path length didn't fix all the busted xrefs. I still have to play with them to see what's going on.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 28, 2013 Mar 28, 2013

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Thanks for the information. I will file a bug report.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 29, 2013 Mar 29, 2013

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I have continued to troubleshoot this issue. My update is that the issue seems to occur when a text inset precedes a cross-reference that links to another file with the book. I had several paragraphs between the inset and the cross-reference and it still seems to have caused the issue. Hope this can help someone that may encounter this.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2013 Mar 31, 2013

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Hmm, that's interesting - I don't use text insets in my projects, so I hadn't run into that, but it's good to know.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 28, 2013 Mar 28, 2013

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In addition, I saved two files with a broken cross reference as HTML within Framemaker  and brought them into RoboHelp and it appears as though the link was preserved using this method. This makes me not understand the conversion limitation with RoboHelp even more.

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Participant ,
Apr 11, 2013 Apr 11, 2013

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Hi,

Try running the RoboHelp update available here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html

I had issues with cross-references not converting properly in TCS4, and this update fixed the problems.

Alexandra

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New Here ,
May 22, 2013 May 22, 2013

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For what its worth, I came across this thread after running into this issue as well. I'm glad I read to the bottom and found @ASnyder28's post about the text insets. I copied my file, converted all of the text insets, and voila! Correctly converted cross references.

I don't really like this solution, but for a help project that needs to be delivered tomorrow, it works.

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Community Beginner ,
May 23, 2013 May 23, 2013

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I am glad my post helped. It isn't ideal or pretty, but it is a workaround that will get the files out the door on time. Let's hope for a real fix soon!

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Community Expert ,
Jun 03, 2013 Jun 03, 2013

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To add to the joy of those that got their xrefs fixed with this patch:

I just discovered 2 things:

  1. My Rh wasn't patched up to 10.0.1
  2. Solving Thing #1 solved an issue with spot cross-references. I have now regained control of my spot xrefs.

Thx to the Rh team for putting out the patch!

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Explorer ,
Oct 23, 2013 Oct 23, 2013

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We are working with TCS 3.5 and RH 9 and FM 10.

The problem is the same.

We have two projects with missing Cross references in Robohelp after importing from Framemaker.

The cross references worked fine until I started to work with text insets.

We want to use text insets intensively in the future. As a modular system. This is very important for us.

Crossreferences are essential for online help systems, two. What to do?

What we need is an update for Robohelp 9 that fixes this problem.

Hope, there is someone with good news

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Community Expert ,
Oct 23, 2013 Oct 23, 2013

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Don’t hold your breath – you need to upgrade to TCS 4 because with a new version coming 2014, they’re not doing much fixing in any but the prior release.

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Explorer ,
Nov 04, 2013 Nov 04, 2013

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Thanks for your reply!

Well, we bought the TCS in November 2012.

For our small company this was a big step foward, but also high expenses.

An update is my worst case: 1.300 € for each licence  for one bug fix.

So, there is no angel of mercy with a patch for RH 9. Is there any way to address

my request to Adobe?

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