Adobe Community: Image path appearing as tooltip in the PDF documentation

Boggym Calculating status...

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Image path appearing as tooltip in the PDF documentation

Oct 27, 2010 6:19 AM

Hi all,

I posted this issue a while ago, and I also offered the solution of populating the Screen tip of the image in the image's properties, however this is working for RH7, whereas for RH8 it does not matter what I enter in the Screen tip, it will still show the complete path of the image at the moment of creation of the PDF giving away some sensitive information. Not displaying the Screen tip specified in the image's properties is definitely a bug. Is there any remedy to that. Basically I do not need any Screen tip for my pictures. Best would be to not display anything, however it seems impossible for the time being.

It does not matter if I generate the PDF directly as a layer in RH8 or I generate it from Word, the result is the same, and it is annoying.

I hope there is a remedy to that.

I use a Windows XP Pro 32 bit, and I installe all service packs from Adobe.

Thank you,

Bogdan

4516 Views 67 Replies Latest reply: Peter Grainge, Sep 1, 2012 4:05 AM

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1. Boggym,

Oct 27, 2010 6:21 AM in reply to Boggym

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I forgot to say that the Windows XP Pro machine is native Japanese, and the project is in Japanese as well.
I do not know if this could have any implications at all.

Bogdan

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2. Boggym,

Nov 22, 2010 8:33 AM in reply to Boggym

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An auxiliary note to the original message.
I also tested if this bug is appearin in other types of machines, and I can confirm that at leats on an English localized machine appeared as well.
Is there really no remedy to that?
I think what I was callin tooltip it is called in the Adobe terminology tagging. So the tagging is automatically turned on in the new PDF AddOn 9 and I have no idea how to turn it off.
I managed to deinstall the new one 9 and reinstall the old one 8.1 and this one when I am converting a doc to pdf is asking me if I want to turn off the tagging, and as I say Yes, no picture is disclosing any sensitive information (image path), however when I am doing that, the table of contents in the pdf document looses the possibility to jump to the topic clicked. It is not reacting like a link anymore, which is kind of sad.
I hoped I would receive a solution to my problem by asking the forum, however sadly nobody was able to give any idea at all, and I refuse to believe that I am the only one having this kind of problem with RH8.
Also it is very sad that Adobe did not do anything about this issue, as it is without any doubt a serious bug regarding the security of the pdf document. It is disclosing sensitive information about the document creator's system, and it should not.

Bogdan

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3. Boggym,

Nov 23, 2010 6:49 AM in reply to Boggym

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Hi all,

I had to submit the case to Adobe customer service after all, and it seems that it is not dependent on my system only. It happens for everybody who uses RH8.
The guy tried to explain me that it is a desirable functionality, however failed to explain how asking the program to display a desired image tip fails to do so only in RH8, and it displays the image path is a desirable functionality. Who would need this kind of information displayed as one reads a pdf document.
So, the case is now in Adobe's hands and I hope they will find a solution soon because I have a lot of difficulties to explain to my managers that RH8 is a good product for us. Right now we will stay on RH7 for most of our projects.
Anyway, if anybody finds a solution for this, besides eliminating the tagging, I would be very glad to hear from it.

Thank you for all your support,

Bogdan

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4. Boggym,

Feb 25, 2011 7:32 AM in reply to Boggym

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Hi all,

Very interesting this RH9.
I was told from the guys from customer support that in RH9 the issue was solved, and that I have to buy it.
Good that I did not buy it because the issue was not solved at all. (Was what they told me a lie, or just miscomunication?)
When I import a project from RH7 it will show in the screen tip what I entered previously in RH7. Event if I delet it, it will still show it in the pdf document (?!)
However, when I insert a brand new picture and I enter something in the screen tip, it will still show the path of the picture on my server.
I.e. the issue was not solved in RH9, though they insisted that I should buy it.
I begin to wonder about the integrity of this company. At least the communication between the customer service and the development team is not working.
I am very disapointed.

Bogdan

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5. rajibdugar,

Mar 2, 2011 12:35 AM in reply to Boggym

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For <img> tag, value of “title” attribute is used to display tooltip/screentip for the image. The alt attribute is meant to be used as an alternative text if the image is not available, not as a mouse-over text. In Robohelp, user can specify the screentip for each image. Robohelp(<=9.0) does not have user interface to update/insert alternative text, though user can go to the code view for each image and update the value of alternative text.

Now your problem occurs in the case when the value of alt attribute is empty. To provide each image an alt value(required for XHTML), the filename of the image is copied to the alt attribute value on generating output. This filename is somehow converted to absolute path of the image in PDF, that is shown in the description as tooltip.

One solution to the problem is to copy the value of the screentip to the alt text. Doing this manually will be a tedious task for projects having large number of images. To automate the work, please download a Robohelp script(AltTestUpdater.jsx) from https://acrobat.com/#d=DVsTaYdohOB8T*2woAhBLA and rename it from AltTestUpdater_jsx to AltTestUpdater.jsx

This script can be used to –
1.       Copy the “title” attribute of the image into “alt” attribute when “alt” attribute is empty.
2.       To force update “alt” attributes from title, uncomment the line in the script.
//altUpdater.SetForceUpdate(true);
3.       The script will notify the user with the number of updated topics, master pages and snippets in the project once script is executed.

Steps to execute the script:
1.       Launch RoboHelp.
2.       Open the project.
3.       Open Script Explorer pod from View>pods menu and import the script.
4.       Please close all the topics, master pages and snippets if any is opened.
5.       Run the Script from the Script Explorer.
6.       You will be prompted with summary iterating how many topics, master pages and snippets got updated.

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6. Boggym,

Mar 7, 2011 9:54 AM in reply to rajibdugar

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Hi,

Thank you very much for your e-mail, however the solution that you offered is not acceptable for a brand new version of software.
I would have to apply it to all the existing projects if I want to migrate them from RoboHelp7 to RoboHelp9.
Until you offer a fully functional version of RoboHelp we decided to stay with RoboHelp7, and if your competition is offering us something more competitive, we will move to them. The issue I signalled you is a bug and not a "desirable feature" as someone from the help desk was trying to convince me. The fact that you did not remove it, as it should have been the case, and you just propagate it from RoboHelp8 to RoboHelp9 and made it worse, I wonder if RoboHelp is a software we should consider as an option for us.

Have a great day,

Bogdan Marin
Localization Specialist
APOS Systems Inc.
Tel: 519.894.2767 ext. 219
www.apos.com

APOS – Well Managed BI

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7. MLRProductions2,

May 22, 2011 5:11 AM in reply to Boggym

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Hello...I just came across this post. I thought I would add my two cents on what worked for me. I was really annoyed when I hovered with my curser over a picture in a .pdf document I created in Word. So I googled the problem and came here. I couldn't find a "great" answer anywhere, so I experimented. There is an option when you are making the .pdf document that will get rid of the tooltip. In the save process, you will notice an "options" button to the right side of the save dialog box. Under that section, you will notice several options:

Create Bookmarks using Headings/Word bookmarks
Document Properties
Document structure tags for accessibility

...and 2 more options. You will want to deselect the "Document structure tags for accessibility" option. That will solve the problem (at least it did for me!) and there should be no revealing path tooltip.

Hope that helps!

~ MLRProductions

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8. Boggym,

May 24, 2011 6:02 AM in reply to MLRProductions2

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Hi,

Thank you for the tip, however I already tried it.
The problem is that it removez all the nice goodies which enables a quick navigation through the document, especially the TOC.
Therefore it is not a solution for us. Adobe better solve this as they should.
They offered me version 8, and then 9 with the problem worse and worse, so...
I am still waiting. They did not contact me for a long time, so I guess that they forgot about the issue which might prove to be a severe security issue, however they saw it as a "desired feature". I wonder who in their right state of mind would think of that as a "desired feature". For what purpose?

Have a great day,

Bogdan

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9. Boggym,

Jun 3, 2011 10:51 AM in reply to rajibdugar

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Hi Rajibdugar,

Thank you for this solution.
As nothing better was offered from Adobe directly, I was willing to try this solution that you so kindly suggested.
I followed the steps, however I got stuk at the step with the Script explorer, which is supposed to be in among the available pods.
Would you please be so kind and tell me where this is to be found, or if I have to install it from somewhere else?

Thank you

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10. Peter Grainge,

Jun 3, 2011 11:12 AM in reply to Boggym

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I believe the script was supplied by Adobe but scripts are a RoboHelp 8 and 9 feature. I believe you stayed with 7, correct?

If you did upgrade, the pod is Script Explorer or you can access the scripts via the Tools menu.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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11. Boggym,

Jun 3, 2011 11:16 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Thank you for the response Peter,

I will give RH8 another chance.
I was hoping so much from this version, and of course from RH9 too, only to see all my hopes vanishing likd nothing.
And, when I turned to the Adobe helpdesk, they acted so disappointing...
Anyway, I will give it another shot and see what is happening, if it is solving our issue in any way.

Have a great weekend,

Bogdan

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12. Peter Grainge,

Jun 3, 2011 11:37 AM in reply to Boggym

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Don't even think about opening a project in RoboHelp 8 unless you have applied the two patches. See Opening Projects on my site for an explanation.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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13. Boggym,

Jun 3, 2011 11:39 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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You mean the 2 SP's?
Or are there any patches to the RH8?

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14. Peter Grainge,

Jun 3, 2011 12:57 PM in reply to Boggym

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Service Pack, Patch, call it what you like. We are talking about the same thing. When done your version should be 8.0.2

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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15. Boggym,

Jun 3, 2011 12:59 PM in reply to Peter Grainge

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OK.
I understood.
I do not have any RH8 projects (I reverted all of them to RH7), so it will be OK.
I will migrate one project only to RH8 after I am at 8.0.2

Thank you,

Bogdan

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16. Boggym,

Jun 3, 2011 2:02 PM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Is there any links where I could find the service packs?
I tried to do the update from the Help menu, however it is staying at 8.0.0

Bogdan

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17. Peter Grainge,

Jun 3, 2011 2:29 PM in reply to Boggym

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

First though check in Control Panel > Programs and Features to see if 802 is installed there. I have seen a couple of cases where Help > About shows a different version. If you do have that problem, uninstall both patches and reinstall.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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18. Boggym,

Jun 6, 2011 6:51 AM in reply to rajibdugar

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I imported an existing project in RH8, inserted a new picture and left the screen tip empty.
I closed that topic and ran the script.
I then created the pdf, and the picture file path is there, so, I guess that the script does not work.
Sigh...

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19. Peter Grainge,

Jun 6, 2011 7:05 AM in reply to Boggym

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In the other thread someone posted that it worked for them so I'm surprised to see this. Did you get the summary referred to in Step 6 above and did it seem right?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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20. Boggym,

Jun 6, 2011 7:12 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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I saw that too, and therefore I wanted to try it too.
What I did was something like this:
- I installed the RH8, as I did not have it installed at all
- I installed the 2 SP's so that now my RH8 says 8.0.2
- I imported a project that I know it works
- I removed the screen tip from one of the pictures, and I ran the script
- it gave me a summary saying something about 2 changes
- after the pdf was created I checked the what happens when I move the mouse over that picture, and it was showing still that screen tip that I deleted
- I inserted a new picture, and left it with no screen tip, how RH is inserting it normall
- I ran the script again, and it told me that 0 changes were made
- I checked the picture in the pdf file, and it was showing the picture file path
- I did not check how it is working with RH9, as I think that my trial expired, and I do not want to waste more time

Bogdan

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21. Peter Grainge,

Jun 6, 2011 7:30 AM in reply to Boggym

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Is it me or have you not followed Rajib's steps? He explains the screen tip will become the Alt Text and fix the problem. You have removed the screen tip. So no screen tip means no Alt Text which means your problem is still going to be there.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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22. Boggym,

Jun 6, 2011 7:34 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Aha, so it means that I still have to use the screen tip?
I hoped that I do not have to use it anymore.
Then it is the same as the RH7, right? We have right now all pictures with a screen tip in RH7.
Also, if you followed my steps, I wrote that if I remove the screen tip of an old picture, it will still show the screen tip which was deleted.
So, if at a later point in time we choose to change the content of the screen tip, it will still show the old one, ritght?
How are going to go around this one? At least the RH7 is old however it does what we want it to do.

Bogdan

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23. Peter Grainge,

Jun 6, 2011 7:51 AM in reply to Boggym

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My understanding was that in RoboHelp 7 you had a workaround for the root problem but it didn't work and RoboHelp 8 or 9. I thought you were seeking a something that would continue to work in 8 or 9 but I now realise you want to be able to add images without a screentip but end up with a PDF not showing the path.

I know nothing about writing scripts but I'm thinking it should be possible to amend that script to find all the images but instead of writing the screentip as the Alt Text it puts in something generic such as "Image"

Could one of your developers do that?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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24. Boggym,

Jun 6, 2011 8:06 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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You understood correctly.
We wanted originally to have pictures that do not show anything whatsoever when the mouse pointer is hovering over them.
We discovered that it did not matter what we did, we could not get rid of this bug in the RH8
We reverted to 7 as at least we could add a screen tip that would show what we wanted. It was better then the image path.
After a lot of "fighting" with the Adobe Helpdesk (they tried to convince us that this bug was a "desired feature", that apparently some users wanted it that way) we were told by the them that the RH9 would have the bug removed. However to our disappointment, it was actually worse than the 8. The screen tip was completely disregarded. I was wondering why did the have it in the picture properties at all if it is not used.
Therefore we reverted all our projects that we had in RH8 to RH7, it was a lot of work, however it was worth it because now we had it very close to what we wanted.
So, now we are at RH7, though we bought the RH8. The helpdesk did not answered our requests to have at least the RH9 instead of the RH8 which we could not use at all. It was actually OK, as we do not want the RH9 in the state that it is right now.
This is our "story".
I am the only one in my company working with RH, so I would be the only one who would write the script.
Unfortunately, now I am kind of very busy to try to write a script, as I do not know how to do that. I am a programmer basically, however did not program for a long time, and I do not have the time to begin writing ant testing scripts in order for RH8 to work as we wish.
I guess that Adobe has more workforce in that regard, and it would not be such a big deal to fix a bug that they have in their product, right?
This is how I see it.
When we have a bug in our products, we get the feedback from our clients, however we fix the bugs ourselves.
Is anything wrong in my thinking?

Thank you,

Bogdan

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25. Peter Grainge,

Jun 6, 2011 10:14 AM in reply to Boggym

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I suspect the difficulty is that fix is something the Acrobat team have to resolve rather than the RoboHelp team. Don't scream back it's all Adobe, I know it is but if yours is a large organisation, you will know what I mean.

Can I assume that having "Image" or better still nothing showing in the PDF and no need for Screentips would be an acceptable way forward?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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26. Boggym,

Jun 6, 2011 10:19 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Definitely!
If nothing appears as screen tip, it would be great.
Right now, we managed to have all pictures in all our projects with a screen tip, however if nothing would appear, it would be great.
Our main concern was that the path was appearing, and that was something totally undesirable.
So, the screen tip is of no interes to us, unless it can "overwrite" the path that was appearin by default. We used it as a workaround solution.

Thank you,

Bogdan

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27. Boggym,

Aug 15, 2011 10:48 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Hi Peter,

I understood that the image issue is still not solved with RoboHelp9.
Is the developing team going to announce the solving of the issue somehow, or should I just download the trial and see if it is solved or not?

Thank you,

Bogdan

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28. Peter Grainge,

Aug 15, 2011 12:07 PM in reply to Boggym

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If it is dealt with through a patch to RoboHelp 9, it will be in the release notes and I add those to Using RoboHelp 9 on my site.

If it is dealt with by a script I imagine that will be covered in the Adobe blog at http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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29. Boggym,

Aug 15, 2011 11:36 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Thank you.
I will watch your website as well as the blog.
On your website, is it going to be mentioned in "What's new"?

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30. Peter Grainge,

Aug 15, 2011 12:09 PM in reply to Boggym

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Reread my post. I have applied bold to help you and here's a link http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh9/using_rh9.htm.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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31. Boggym,

Aug 15, 2011 1:09 PM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Thank you so much Peter.
I will check it out.
Did I understand correctly? Is there already a patch to solve this problem, or not yet?

Bogdan

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32. Peter Grainge,

Aug 15, 2011 1:34 PM in reply to Boggym

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It is not yet fixed.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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33. Peter Grainge,

Sep 18, 2011 1:01 AM in reply to Peter Grainge

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Bogdan

Another problem caused me to wonder if there isn't a simple solution to this.

In both 8 and 9 if you enter a screentip its value gets written in RoboHelp 9 to the TITLE property in the Image tag.

In 9 the ALT property is given the same value but in 8 it is left blank and reads ALT=""

On generating the output Rajib indicated that RoboHelp adds the path when the output is created IF the ALT value is blank.

I'm wondering if you could simply do a find and replace where the find is ALT="" and the replace is something like ALT="Image". In theory RoboHelp should find a value when generating and leave it alone and that is what you will get in your PDF. You could also add TITLE="Image" to the replace string.

I haven't tested this so do try it on a copy of your project.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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34. kathyb999,

Nov 15, 2011 1:35 PM in reply to Boggym

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Has any more been found out about this?
We recently upgraded from RH7 to RH9 (along with upgrading to Word 2007 and Acrobat X). We were very startled and dismayed to see these so-called tooltips, which we just found out about today although we have been publishing PDF'd docs from RH9 for about 6 weeks now. Showing this path (back to RH! and document draft names!) and image name is really not acceptable. But before we attempt to implement the solution which is way up in the discussion here (and I am not sure I understand the steps yet), I wanted to see if any more information or solutions had been found.
So...Boggym, if you are still out there, did the suggested steps actually work for you and is there anything you'd like to point out to someone following in your footsteps?
Thanks,
kb

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35. Boggym,

Nov 17, 2011 1:58 PM in reply to kathyb999

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Hi kathyb999,

I just did not have the time yet to experiment what was suggested.
If you want my oppinion, it is a little bit too complicated for me to do all these changes to all our projects. Even for the project that I am working on right now, it is just too big to even begin doing any changes to this.
I am using the work around for that, i.e. I am entering something in the screen tip, however this has an effect on RH7, and no effect on RH8 or 9.
I hope that Adobe will come with a solution to this really quick, otherwise my company will be moving away from RoboHelp all together. We already began doing this, as no functional RH was offered till now.
I am still working, because of that, with RH7. We were doing chm's before and printed documentation (pdf), and because of the issues over the network with chm's we are only doing pdf, and RoboHelp is not helping too much, unfortunately. I was wondering if there are any ohter layers that would be as compact and nice as chm was before...
So, I am still waiting for a functional version of RoboHelp, still working with RH7, if it will come till we are not completely away from it. I still hope they will, however...
I am sorry I cannot offer you any good news.

Have a great day

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36. RochesterTechWriter,

Nov 18, 2011 6:51 AM in reply to Boggym

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Everyone,

I'm using Acrobat Professional 8.3.1 and discovered this problem for the first time yesterday. (Actually, one of my developers noticed it and said some unfavorable things.) I'm creating PDFs from Word.

It sounds like there are three fixes:

- Killing all the hyperlinks in the PDF to turn off the alt text display.
- Upgrading to Acrobat Version 9 and installing all the updates . (Can someone confirm this will fix it?)
- Do some programming in the PDF code to reset the alt text value. (Gleeps; that's new turf for me.)

I don't know how to access image properties in PDF, though I'd be happy to change all the alt text values manually. I notice if I save the screen capture and insert it into my Word document before generating the PDF, no alt text is displayed (but it will take a lot of time to recapture all the images in my documentation and save and insert them). When I copy and paste the screen captures, the path is shown.

Is there a clear resolution to this or is Adobe still trying to respond? (Please don't reiterate history; I've read all the posts.) Thanks!

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37. Boggym,

Nov 18, 2011 6:56 AM in reply to RochesterTechWriter

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I am also generating the PDF's from Word as I can do some more necessary formatting which I cannot do from Acrobat. I use Acrobat 10 and the problem is still there.
If you kill all the hyperlinks then you kill also the navigability of the PDF document, and I do not think it is worth it.
From what I understood, the problem "would be with Acrobat". See the previous comments from this discussion.

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38. RochesterTechWriter,

Nov 18, 2011 7:00 AM in reply to Boggym

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Boggy,

That's clear but depressing news. Guess I'll work with the programming staff here and see what they can fix "under the covers". Since we're generating a lot of content in PDF, it also means we may need a new PDF solution. Dang.

Thanks for responding!

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39. Boggym,

Nov 18, 2011 7:06 AM in reply to RochesterTechWriter

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You are welcome!
I am dealing with this issue since RH7, and because I can work around it only in RH7 I stayed with it. Unfortunately, it does not work with RH8 or 9, though I was told at some point by the customer support from Adobe that the version 9 would have fixed it, whereas it made it worse.
Sorry to hear that you have these problems too.
We are now in the process of switching of smaller projects from RH to Word, and it is working well for us, as we do not have to do the same text formatting over and over, and from Word we generate PDFs. We use the "Save as" from Word and not the Acrobat add-on because it is faster.
Did you try to populate the screen tip for all the images with something like the title of the project?

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