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RH 9 - Why does RH modify my ssl settings?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:45:50 GMT

I'm using RH 9.0.2.271.

The Background: We have a large help system (approx 2200 topics) that we have to generate into PDFs one per chapter. We also need to do this in various target languages as well once we get them back from our localization department. So, I created an SSL per chapter in our English project (38 in total), and each SSL is setup to output a single PDF:

The idea is use RH's batch generate, and have all 38 PDFs get generated. We then bundle them up into a zip and provide them to our customers. It works great in the English. We sent our English RH project off for localization and the translators translated the necessary files.

About SSL and printdoclayout.xml Files: I've looked into the SSL files in a text editor, and the SSL files for printed outputs do not specify themselves what gets sent to the .doc or .pdf. Instead, when you create the SSL, RH also creates a unique xml file with this name printdoclayout(n).xml, where n is a number that increments for each additional printable SSL you have and the SSL contains a reference to use that XML. The printdoclayout.xml actually contains the chapter structure that gets sent to the printable output:

Within the <tocstructure> element, it contains the hierarchy of what to export. (Note that even though it has <chapter> and <page> elements, those are misnomers since they're really just topics references with <chapter> for a book-style entry that contains a subtopics. The important thing is that in this example, the xml matches what I have in the Chapter Layout list of the Print Document Content dialog box shown above:

How We Work with Localized Files: We send off the entire RH project to the translators. They give us back the necessary files (.htm, .hhk, .hhc and so on). This time we also asked them to translate the name attributes in each <chapter> and <page> element of each printdoclayout.xml file, because RH draws from those strings during the printable output generation, and we didn't want it to pull in the English strings from the original XML files. When we get the file's back from our localization department, we make a copy of the English RH project that was localized and we use that as a base. We then copy the files they send back to us into it, overwriting what's in the English. We then modify the RH project settings to match the target language. Then we generate the desired output.

The Problem: Now we're getting the localized projects backs, but when we try to generate the printable outputs from a localized RH project, RH no longer respects what I originally defined in the 38 SSLs/xmls. Instead of trying to output a single chapter per SSL, it's trying to output ALL chapters in each SSL. For example, notice what happens when I open up the same layout in the localized Chinese. (Notice the blue highlight in the left side of the Print Document Content dialog box, showing that ALL the chapters are now somehow selected.)

I don't understand why merely opening up the SSL causes it to select ALL the topics for the generation, especially when the underlying (localized) .xml file still shows the correct chapter output as shown here:

It seems like there's another setting or file or perhaps just a bug that's telling it to grab all chapters and topics. In fact, it looks like the entire SSL is pretty much wiped out. My section layout and the style settings need to be redone as well.

Anyway, the workaround I came up with, is we have to go back into each layout (38 of them) in each target language and select again the proper chapter per layout (as well as fix the section layout and style settings). It's a time-consuming and error-prone manual fix, especially since in some target languages, like Chinese where I don't read the characters and could easily get lost and choose the wrong chapter.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Message was edited by: Jared Hess. To resize some images and add additional info.

RH9 - Can I restore layouts in "Single Source Layouts" pod from .ssl files?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 18:23:58 GMT

RH 9 (latest)

Windows 7 x64

Due to some corruption somewhere in our main help project that prevented me from generating layouts using the RoboHelp command line (rhcl.exe), I deleted my .xpj file and .cpd file, and then recreated the .xpj project file from the .hhp file. This is the recommended fix to get things back to normal that I did two years ago when I got this same error. (For info, see Command line generation errors in log. How do I fix this?)

However, as expected, all my single source layouts are now missing from the Single Source Layouts pod. Is there a way to recreate the single source layouts from the .ssl files so they appear back in the pod with their previous settings? Like a way to re-import then into the project? I have 36 individual ssls just for printable output alone that I spent creating all day last Friday (1 per chapter), I really do NOT want to manually recreate them.

A related question is, where does RH store the link between xpj and ssl layouts? Because when I checked the xpj inside Notepad++ prior to deleting it, there weren't any references to the individual single source layout files there; I don't understand how deleting an xpj file removes references to the ssls when the .ssl files obviously still exist in the project folder.

RH9 - Any idea why generating printable output from the Command Line doesn't include images?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 15:04:31 GMT

I have a batch file that creates a printable output of our main documentation broken up into 36 separate documents, 1 per chapter. Each chapter is a separate layout. I realize that RH has its own Batch building process, but the reason for me doing it through the command line via a batch file (.bat) is that RH keeps taking focus from my mouse and it makes it difficult to do any other computer work while the RH project generates the printable output for those chapters.

Anyway, RH's Batch build works fine.

But the command line for printable output does not include any of my images in the printable output. I don't know why. The document generates with all the topics fine, but the images are missing. No placeholder box in the resulting Word doc, they just simply weren't included. Has anyone else seen this? Any way to fix it?

RH 9 - Can I edit browse sequence button sizes in a CHM?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:03:03 GMT

I'm quite sure this is NOT possible, but I promised my localization coordinator, I'd ask.

The issue is that we have localized strings (from RH, not from our translators) that are overlapping on the Next and Previous buttons in some languages in the Browse Sequences. Like this:

I've looked, but I don't see a way to expand the button sizes. I know we can change the .lng file to use different (possibly shorter) terms than what RH picked for these, but a better solution would be to adjust the GUI for text expansion in localized languages.

How can I fix disappearing bulleted and numbered lists from Word output!

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 18:31:29 GMT

RH Version: RH 9.0.2.271

Word Version: 2010

System: Windows 7 Ultimate, SP1. 64-bit machine

Background: We have a very large documentation set in our main RH project of approximately 40 folders (ie chapters), resulting in about 2300 pages all told. Our current modus operandi is to export the printable output in chunks of approximately 6 chapters apiece, and then combine those docs together into a single doc file. This has more or less worked for the past decade.

Current Issue: Lately however, something has changed in our RoboHELP project. Because when I try to combine all of the different chapters together into a single DOC file, I lose bulleted and numbered lists from some chapters. The individual DOC files are fine though.

Since last week I've been trying to track down where the root of this problem is. I have exported every single chapter as an individual DOC file, and then I create a blank DOC file, and then use Word's Text from File feature (Insert tab, Text group, Object drop down, then Text from File) to combine the docs together.

If I select the last chapter, press Shift, and then select the very first chapter, and then click Insert to get them into the correct chapter order, Word then combines the files. But the last few chapters all have their bullets and numbering removed.

If I select the last chapter, press shift, and select the fifth chapter, and all the numbering is fine so far. But then if I tried to combine the remaining four chapters at the beginning, I lose bullets and numbered lists on those beginning chapters.

Perhaps the best way to describe the problem is through a video showing the issue. See below.

I've wasted countless hours trying to troubleshoot this problem, and trying to locate what's causing this or even to do a workaround. But I'm out of ideas.

Something is very wrong, because Word won't even allow me to manually apply the bulleted or numbered lists as a post process step in any doc where the bulleted and numbered lists are removed.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Available Files:

Here's an ~10 min video of me demonstrating the problem:

http://www.screencast.com/users/WAIDocumentation/folders/Issues/media/8a37e647-583b-4b81-9 8a2-54ba4fded60a

Here are the individual exported Word files (in Chinese Simplified) used in the video, if anyone is feeling generous enough to take a look:

ftp://files.wilcoxassoc.com/tempdistrib/ForRH/individualchapters.zip

And here's the RH project (again in Chinese):

ftp://files.wilcoxassoc.com/tempdistrib/ForRH/chs_CoreHelp_28_Feb_2014.zip

(password for both zips is loathingword)

Thanks in advance for any ideas you can offer.

Strange Characters instead of Expected Russian appear in Glossary Tab in 32-bit OS

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 27 May 2014 22:59:05 GMT

I'm using RoboHelp 9.0.271.

I consider myself relatively well-versed in localization issues when it comes to generating an html help (chm) from RoboHelp, but this one has me stumped. In the Russian version of our main help file, the Glossary tab has strange ASCII characters in place of expected Russian characters when the help file is viewed on an 32-bit system, like this:

But notice RH's Glossary pod in the RH UI in the above capture. It displays the correct characters.

Similarly, if it's viewed on a 64-bit system, it displays the Russian characters properly.

My system locale setting in Control Panel's language settings is properly set to Russian.
My .glo file when viewed in NotePad has its encoding set to UTF-8 (though I tried ASCII to no avail).
My language settings in RH are set to Russian at the project level and at the single source layout level.
My .hhp file has these glossary-related settings:

[OPTIONS]

...

Custom tab="&Glossary", HHActiveX.GlossaryPane

[WINDOWS]

HtmlHelp="Файл справки PC-DMIS","Core.hhc","Core.hhk","","intro.htm",,,,,0x400e1520,0,0x384e,[167,44,867,684],0x 0,0x0,,0,0,0,[Glossary,HHActiveX.GlossaryPane]

Any ideas on how to resolve this? Or is this just a limitation of 32-bit systems and Russian characters that I'll have to swallow?

ehlpdhtm.js script error - Object doesn't support property or method 'Activate'

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:40:58 GMT

RH 9.0.2.271

Windows 7 64-bit

This "Object doesn't support property or method 'Activate' ehlpdhtm.js error all of a sudden started popping up when I view any of the chms I build from my file system.

I initially through it was a 64-bit problem because if I view the chm from my file system I get the script error. But if I copy it to a 32-bit PC or run it from within RH (after it's compiled for example) or a 32-bit version of our software, it runs fine. (However, one of my co-workers tried it on her 64-bit machine and didn't receive any error.) In any case, it seems to be happening on my machine only.

Anyway, it's not on every topic, but on every one that calls the ehlpdhtm.js script with this line of code, it appears to be happening:

I don't think hhactivex.dll plays with this js at all, but just in case, I unregistred and re-registered that dll to no effect. I also tried explicitly adding in ehlpdhtm.js as a baggage file. Again, to no effect.

What could have changed on my system to make this start happening? And any ideas on how to fix it?

How do I find topics with tracked changes on them?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 22:54:05 GMT

When trying to generate a help output, RH keeps showing a message box: "Your project contains tracked changes. Do you want to continue?"

How can I find what topics have the tracked changes? I don't see it as one of the reports and the track changes toolbar doesn't have anything either.

I'm using the latest RH 9.

How can I make a custom style look the same in both printed and online?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 22:43:20 GMT

My specs:

RH 9.0.2.271

Windows 7, 64-bit

Word 2010

The Background Info:

So I created some custom css styles to try and mimic the look of a message box in our documentation. Here's the css code:

.MsgBox {

color: #000000;

border-left-style: Solid;

border-right-style: Solid;

border-top-style: Solid;

border-bottom-style: Solid;

font-size: 10pt;

background-color: #eeeeee;

border-left-width: 4px;

border-right-width: 4px;

border-top-width: 4px;

border-bottom-width: 4px;

border-left-color: #cdcdcd;

border-right-color: #cdcdcd;

border-top-color: #cdcdcd;

border-bottom-color: #cdcdcd;

width: 350px;

padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px;

box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #888888;

margin-bottom: 7pt;

}

.MsgBoxTitle {

color: #000000;

border-left-style: Solid;

border-right-style: Solid;

border-top-style: Solid;

border-bottom-style: Solid;

font-size: 10pt;

background-color: #cdcdcd;

border-left-width: 4px;

border-right-width: 4px;

border-top-width: 4px;

border-bottom-width: 0px;

border-top-color: #cdcdcd;

border-bottom-color: #cdcdcd;

border-left-color: #cdcdcd;

border-right-color: #cdcdcd;

width: 350px;

padding: 5px 5px 5px 5px;

box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #888888;

}

My HTML Code:

<div class="MsgBoxTitle">
    PC-DMIS MESSAGE:
</div>
<div class="MsgBox">
    <p>Please do the following steps in the indicated order.</p>
    <p>1. Remove the current SH-1/2/3 stylus.</p>
    <p>2. Attach the SHSP (Stylus Holder Setting Piece).</p>
    <p>3. Jog the probe to a safe location with a clear line of approach
     to the port(s) being calibrated. </p>
    <p>4. Then click OK.</p>
    <p>After you click OK the machine will begin DCC measurement.</p>
</div>

The Expected Output:

Here's how it renders in a browser (the title is MsgBoxTitle, the body is the MsgBox style). I'm happy with how it looks there, even if the box shadow doesn't always display:

The Ugly Printed Output:

And here's what it looks like in the printed output.

Ugly. Are there any tricks to get the printable (doc) output to match the online? Ideally, on the printed output, I'd like to have all the white space in my pseudo message box removed so it looks just like the online.

Keep with Next?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 29 Jan 2014 17:37:57 GMT

So I author inside of RoboHtml and one of our outputs is a printed output.

I'm pretty sure RH doesn't have an option similar to Word's "Keep with next" option for Heading styles, but figured I'd ask to be safe?

If not, are there any workarounds to accomplish the same thing at the source level that doesn't involve post processing on the resulting doc file?

Is a Sentence Level Wordcount Possible via Scripting?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 20:23:51 GMT

I'm interested in creating a script that works at the sentence level that counts the number of words in a selected sentence and reports it in the Output View to help the author write more concisely. Is such a thing is possible in RoboHelp 9, the verison I have? For example, can a RH script operate on selected text, like it can in a Word macro?

It's been a while since I've worked ona RH script, but from what I remember, something like this isn't possilble.

If that isn't possible, is it possible to to it at the topic level? For example, go through each sentence, count all the words in each sentence in a topic, and if any sentence is greater than the number of specified words, it displays that sentence in the output view.

Multiple HHC3004: Warning: Messages - Results in Rogue Topics

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 22:54:40 GMT

I'm using Windows 7 64-bit and RH 9.

I'm running into a strange problem. When I generate our core help file into a .chm format, my compile log shows 69 "HH3004: Warning:" messages that look something like this:

...

HHC3004: Warning:

Changing_the_Report_Window_s_Contents.htm :

The HTML tag "?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?" is not a valid HTML tag (it does not begin with an alphanumeric character).

HHC3004: Warning:

Changing_the_Report_Window_s_Contents.htm :

The HTML tag "?rh-cbt_end ?" is not a valid HTML tag (it does not begin with an alphanumeric character).

HHC3004: Warning:

Changing_the_Report_Window_s_Contents.htm :

The HTML tag "?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?" is not a valid HTML tag (it does not begin with an alphanumeric character).

...

(Because I get multiple warnings on the same topic, there's only about about 10 unique HTML files with this problem.)

It almost sounds like there are some topics that are getting added into the chm output but are not running through the help generation process. Because these proprietary rh tags are only used during generation. They don't end up in the final output. At least they shouldn't.

If I look into RH's HTML code for these topics, I don't see anything amiss. Everything appears normal to me. For example, in this specific help topic, the HTML code shows this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<head>

<title>Changing the Report Window's Contents</title>

</head>

<body>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><h3>Changing the Report Window's Contents</h3><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<p class="Note"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hint:</span> See the "<a

href="../app_j_shortcuts_topics/Shortcut_Menus_in_the_Report_Window.htm">Shortcut

Menus in the Report Window</a>" topic for a list of functions you

can quickly and easily access to perform some of the modifications discussed

in this topic and its subtopics.</p>

<p class="BodyText">While you can permanently change how and what information

appears in your Report window by <a href="Modifying_Standard_Templates.htm">modifying and

the underlying templates</a> and the rules used, you can also perform

modifications to the objects on a Report window directly within the Report

window by using the information provided in these topics below.</p>

<p class="Note"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Important:</span> Please

note that custom reports, templates, label templates, and other reporting

modifications are NOT backwards compatible.</p>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreHeading">More:</p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Edit_Text_Reporting.htm">Edit

Text Reporting</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Edit_Label_Reporting.htm">Edit

Label Reporting</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Edit_Label_Positioning_and_Size.htm">Edit

Label Positioning and Size</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Edit_CAD_Model_Reporting.htm">Edit

CAD Model Reporting</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Changing_Label_Templates_on_the_Fly.htm">Changing

Label Templates on the Fly</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p class="MoreList"><a href="Removing_Report_Window_Modifications.htm">Removing

Report Window Modifications</a></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-placeholder type="footer" ?>

</body>

</html>

But don't HHC errors have to do with the table of contents? The .HHC file? If I look at the HTML source of our HHC file, where this topic is located (highlighted in orange), I see this:

</item>

</item>

</item>

</item>

</item>

</item>

Again, I don't see anything out of the ordinary.

If I search for this topic inside of the chm file, I get two results, like this:

If I click on each of these, one of them displays as expected, but the other does not:

Here's what the good one looks like:

And here's what the bad one looks like:

Notice the portion I highlighted. In the bad topic, while it looks almost identical, it does not have the feedback content that I'm including at the bottom of each topic. And if I investigate some of the other topics that are exhibiting the same problem, those with images do not display their images in the bad topic.

Now here's something fun! Notice what happens if I examine the topic properties by right clicking on the topic inside of the chm:

The good topic has this expected pathway:

And the bad topic has this unexpected pathway:

It looks like it's pulling that topic from the root level of my project.

But in fact, if I navigate to this directory, and sort by file type, the topic doesn't even exist inside of my help project. Which begs the question, where is this even coming from?

Any ideas on what might be causing this and how to resolve it?

Many thanks in advance.

Spaces between paragraphs in printed lists doesn't match online output

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 17:49:09 GMT

I'm using RH 9, and for some reason, in our printed output, the white space between ordered lists and unordered lists doesn't match the equivalent lists in the printed output.

Here's what it looks like in the online output. This is the amount of spacing we want between our paragraphs:

But here's what the printed output looks like. The list items are too close together.

Obviously, I can fix it post processing on the .doc file, but why is this even happening. Shouldn't it look the same if I'm using the project style sheet for both outputs?

Am I missing something? Thanks in advance!

Can our translators easily localize "Home" text in Breadcrumbs?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 16:54:25 GMT

Our testers noticed this problem in the breadcrumbs in a help generated from a localized RH project:

Notice that the "Home" text in the breadcrumbs is always in English. I hoped if I specified the non-English language in the RH's project settings, it would automatically localize these, but this doesn't happen. Is there a way to expose these strings, so that our translators can localize "Home" into the equivalent non-English text? I know you can change the breadcrumb format and type in new text that way, but our translators don't have RH and so can't access it that way. Is there a text file somewhere that contains these strings?

RoboHelp menus open up slowly

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:34:05 GMT

I don't get it. I have a new computer. More RAM, faster processors etc, yet doing something as simple as clicking on a menu, RH takes around two-three seconds before showing the menu!

On the Customize dialog box for the menu, on Options, I have this:

I thought setting Menu animations to None would fix this, but there's no visible difference. Any ideas on how to fix this? It's just happening in RH.

I have RH 9.02.271

Windows 7 Ulitmate OS, 64-bit system

What file holds Window definitions?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 28 Aug 2013 15:27:55 GMT

I'm trying to move a Window definition from one RH project to another. What file is it stored in? I think it's in the hhp file, but when I move that over into my other project, nothing happens. I'm using the latest RH 9.

Are there any project analysis tools to optimize a project?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 15:12:09 GMT

So, our devs use Coverity (http://www.coverity.com) to scan their code to look for problem areas they can refactor. My boss asked me if there are something out there like that but for documentation projects. I know RH offers the Tools | Reports, but I'm worndering if there are Adobe or 3rd party tools out there that can analyze a RH documentation project in the background to provide you with a list of items to fix or improve. I'm also looking for something that checks a documentation project for duplicate paragraphs, that we could then rewrite as snippets.

For example, MadCap's Flare has an Analyzer tool: http://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/analyzer/

Is anyone aware of tools like this that works with RH projects?

Getting Dynamic Context Sensitive Help API to work with Visual Studio 2012 and 64 bit?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:54:22 GMT

We have RH 9.

Our developers are working on implementing RH's dynamic CSH API inside of our software product:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WSa7dd8288c271d662-26f4398e12b0c229082-8000. html

The instructions our developer found say:

Call your Help projects with the function RH_ShowHelp. The source code for this function is contained in the support files which you import into your development project. Languages supported are Visual Basic, C/C++, JavaScript, and Java. The files are in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp [version]\CSH API. The files are:

CSH API\RoboHelp_CSH.cpp (C/C++, dependent on the .h)

CSH API\RoboHelp_CSH.h (C/C++, dependent on the .cpp)

I zipped up the CSH API from my RH 9 version and sent it to the developer. We're using Visual Studio 2012.

But now the dev is asking, "Is there a newer version? This one doesn't compile in win32 without me making some tweaks, and doesn't work at all in x64..." and "Is RoboHelp10 an option? 9 doesn't seem VS2012 compatible or x64 compatible."

Does anyone know if there are there is a later version of the API available that works for 64-bit / VS 2012?

How can I force text in a table to wrap at the margin? Chinese characters result in wide tables.

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 09 May 2013 23:28:52 GMT

Hello all ye RoboHelpers out there.

Background:

We're using RH 9 (latest patch) on Windows 7 machine.

We document in English and then the RH project gets localized into many diff languages and we use that to generate CHM, and Printed outputs.

The Problem:

In the Chinese language, in printed output, the right border of most tables exeeds well beyond the margin.

Here's what the localized table looks like in the RH editor:

By comparison, here's the equivalent English topic prior to localization:

Our CHM output is fine. In fact, here's what the Chinese looks like in when output to a browser or previewed and I drag the right side to

a narrower width. Notice that the table text appropriately wraps to remain within the window's size:

But here's what it looks like when I generate it in Word's printed output:

Notice the location of the margin at 6.5 inches. It should be wrapping at the margin. And something is weird with the left cell how it's getting pushed so far to the right.

The actual table width ends up around 11 inches! I had some tables last time I did this that were as far out as 18 inches but looked perfectly fine in English!

We use Across Systems for our localization tool, and I've verified that our translators are not messing with the table properties at all; only the text is exposed. One interesting difference I've noticed from other languages, is that Chinese characters do not contain a true space or period characters when we get them back from localization. This makes sentences essentially a really long string of unbroken characters, and I suspect this somehow pushes the generated tables to wide extremes in printed output.

What I've Tried:

I've tried to change the table properties in Word to auto fit the size of the window.

I've tried setting the width in RH to a specific size and regenerating. Still doesn't help.

I've added in space character and doing that does cause lines to wrap in some cases, but not in all. But I shouldn't have to do this.

I've tried to create a VBA macro in Word to size the tables, but couldn't get it to work.

What I need:

I need to somehow globally force all the tables' text strings to wrap once they reaches the right margin no mater what, even if the line does not contain space characters. Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere, either on the RH side or the Word side that can do this for these long strings of characters?

I really hope someone else has figured out how to deal with this because last time I did this, I had to go through approximately 500 tables and manually do a very convoluted workaround dragging the table handle in Print layout mode back to the right margin to get the table to wrap appropriately. It was a major pain in neck!

Many thanks in a advance for any ideas you might have.

Will RH Support a Social Platform?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:27:49 GMT

I'm wondering if anyone has heard noises about RH coming up a social platform that works with documentaiton projects, similar to MadCap Flare's Pulse functionality? I think an underlying social component to leverage customer feedback would be a great addition to RH.

Ways to single-source a glossary in RH 9?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:18:22 GMT

I have a product that will have two different configurations. From what I can tell, there's no way to conditionally mark glossary terms so that they appear in a specific configuration in RH 9.

I know I can create two different glossaries and assign one for each configuration, I'm hoping to avoid duplication of common terms between the two.

How would you suggest handling it? Should I just create a Glossary topic and create all my terms in that? Or are there workarounds to accomplish this sort of thing?

Publishing is Always Publishing All

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:38:35 GMT

Hi there.

RH 9 (latest patch)

Windows 7-64-bit

WebHelp output

We have a couple of very large projects (2000+ topics in each) and publishing is taking a long time because even though we have Publish All cleared, it's still sending up all the files.

For example, in one of these large projects, I made changes to two topics, and added an index entry and then generated it and published it. The generation time isn't too bad and is what I would expect.

But the publish time for only changing two topics and an index entry is ridiculous. It's sending up thousands of files. Here's my results:

Total Files: 2519

Files Published: 2179

Elapsed Time: 18:04

How can we improve this? This is happening for me and my two coworkers on our Doc Team. We are publishing to an internal intranet webserver and we use that for documentation reviews from SMEs. We all share the same publishing location. We all upload our content the same way, by mapping a drive to the server and publish using the File System option.

We are also sharing projects using the open source Merucrial source control system.

Is RH getting confused because multiple authors are sending to one spot? Meaning if I publish to that location and if someone else publishes there, then the next day when I publish again, does RH no longer know that I've published there before and think it has to do all the files over again?

Thanks in advance!

Is there a way to limit this unwanted proliferation of Conditional Build Tags (CBT)?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:53:59 GMT

I have this simple topic with the following sentences marked as online only and a slight tweak to the original marked as print only:

In my mind, this would be a total of four CBTs:

An opening and closing tag that bound the online only (green) text.

An opening and closing tag that bound the print only (red) text.

Instead, any formatting or other change within each statement results in what seems like the addition of more unnecessary tags.

The items marked in yellow and red are what we think are not needed:

Our translators have to reposition all these tags after localizing the text--in all the supported languages, and this seeming unnecessary proliferation of CBTs is creating headaches for them.

Even if I manually delete the unecessary ones in the HTML pane, when I go to the WYSIWYG mode and back to HMTL they're all back again.

I doubt it, but I'm wondering if there a way to control this or is this just a bad RH design? Or possibly, is this actually necessary for a reason that I don't understand?

Command line compiler (rhcl.exe) adds on rogue full pathways into [Merge Files] of .hhp

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:15:13 GMT

I'm using RH 9 and generating chm outputs on my Win 7 64-bit computer.

I have a core chm help file and several sub chm helps that get merged into it.

I have a batch file that regularly compiles our help files locally and then copies them into a common local directory. It then copies them up to a mapped network drive where they are picked up by the nightly build of our installer.

The problem I have, is that the command line compiler (rhcl.exe) is adding on a full pathway for all the sub helps listed in the [Merge Files] section of the core help's .hhp file, causing these problems:

1) First of all, the pathways are wrong. The pathway it puts on is from the location of my .xpj file of my core help project. The output directory for the compiler is actually sending all the helps to a different local directory.

2) These need to be relative, and should not have full pathways. The full pathways make it so that when I click on a subhelp TOC entry that subhelp's topic opens up in an entirely different window instead of merged into the core help's window. (See #13 on Peter's helpful site here about the problem with absolute paths: http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh9/using_rh9.htm)

Here' what I want it to look like (the good):

[MERGE FILES]

pcdmisportable.chm

pcdmistutor.chm

pcdmisvision.chm

pcdmislaser.chm

pcdmiscmm.chm

pcdmisUJB.chm

pcdbasic.chm

toolkitmodulesvwmp.chm

pcdmisdci.chm

toolkitmodules.chm

pcdmisnc.chm

pcdmisip.chm

toolkitmodulesblade.chm

pcdmisregistry.chm

pcdmisfixturing.chm

Here's what it looked like after the command line compile (the bad and the ugly):

[MERGE FILES]

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisportable.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmistutor.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisvision.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmislaser.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmiscmm.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisUJB.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdbasic.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\toolkitmodulesvwmp.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisdci.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\toolkitmodules.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisnc.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisip.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\toolkitmodulesblade.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisregistry.chm

d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\pcdmisfixturing.chm

I've done the following ....

I've checked my .xpj file and they have relative paths only.

I've deleted my .cpd file.

I've removed chm references from my rhbag.apj.

... and the hhp file still gets modified with pathways to my core project

directory tacked on:

It's strange; because if I compile without the command line, by opening the project and running the generation inside of RH, I don't get the problem where it re-writes the [Merge Files] section with the pathnames.

Any ideas on where are these rogue full pathways coming from and how I can fix it? Or is it just a bug with the command line version of the compiler that Adobe will need to fix?

Why does Text overflow a text box in webhelp output?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:14:19 GMT

Hello all ye RHelpers!

I'm using RH 9 on a Win 7-64bit machine. On our doc team, we use the webhelp format to publish our topics internally for SME doc reviews and then we use chm output for our final customer output. Anyway, check out this image. The left shows what the browser displays. The right shows what it looks like when previewed locally and what it looks like inside the chm file.

What is causing the text box's height to shrink in the webhelp output? I tested it in FF and in IE and they both look bad. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Mystery of mysteries. Can't get rid of "Glossary" text on Favorites tab.

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 01:57:40 GMT

I consider myself relatively well-versed in chm file compiling and chm related issues, but this one has me stumped...

System Specs;

RH 9 now (initial English help in background below was compiled using RH 7)

Windows 7 64-bit

First, the background -- We use RoboHelp to compile our English CHM. We then decompile the files from the CHM and ship those off for localization. When they come back from translation, we use usually use FAR HTML to recompile the help. Sometimes we use RH (if FAR HTML is being tempermental). And in rare cases, like today, we use both. So today I was working on compiling a Traditional Chinese help we got back from translation recently. I tried using FAR HTML as usual for the initial post-translation compile. I ran into various and sundry compiler errors that made no sense whatsoever, so I decided to try compiling it in RH instead. The compilation made it through, but the Contents and Index tabs weren't displaying the proper Chinese characters. So I took this Traditional Chinese chm that was compiled by RH, decompiled it, and tinkered with .hhc and .hhk file encoding and charsets and used FAR HTML again to compile. And this time compiling worked without a hitch. We got proper characters. Yay! So far so good. Well, sort of. That's just the background.

Now, the problem -- So now, compiling back in FAR HTML from the above decompiled RH 9 files, I'm getting a psuedo Glossary tab I don't want since in our localized versions of the help. (We simply just call an htm containing the glossary info, and tie the htm to the toolbar.) I say "pseudo" because here's what the navigation pane on the compiled help looks lilke:

Notice that the Favorites tab is actually somehow getting named as "Glossary". We don't want this. I want the default "Favorites" text for the tab. If I unregister the hhactivex.dll and recompile, the "Glossary" string on the tab thankfully goes away, showing just "Favorites". If I register the dll again or move the compiled help onto a system with a registered hhactivex.dll, the problem reappears all by itself when the help is launched.

How can I get my Favorites tab back to normal? I suspect this problem is contained somewhere in the HHP file, specifically my Windows definition. But I've tried recreating the hhp, and the window definition many times, but it still appears. I even at one point tried removing the Favorites tab but then the mystery "Glossary" text moves onto infesting the Search tab.

Here's my hhp innards if it helps:

[OPTIONS]

Binary TOC=No

Binary Index=Yes

Compiled File=pcdlrn.chm

Contents File=pcdlrn.hhc

Index File=pcdlrn.hhk

Default Window=HtmlHelp

Default Topic=intro.htm

Default Font=,,136

Full-text search=Yes

Auto Index=Yes

Language=0x404 Chinese (Traditional/Taiwan)

Title=PC-DMIS Help

Create CHI file=No

Compatibility=1.1 or later

Error log file=_errorlog.txt

Full text search stop list file=

Display compile progress=Yes

Display compile notes=Yes

[WINDOWS]

HtmlHelp="PC-DMIS Help","pcdlrn.hhc","pcdlrn.hhk","intro.htm","intro.htm","pcdlrn_glo.htm","Glossary Button",,,0x61520,244,0x4386E,[432,113,1354,863],0xB0000,,,,,,0

[FILES]

Auto_Edge_Strength.htm

... and a bazillion other files ...

[ALIAS]

#include Core.ali

[MAP]

#include BSSCDefault.h

[MERGE FILES]

errorcodes.chm

pcdbasic.chm

pcdmiscmm.chm

pcdmisdci.chm

pcdmisfixturing.chm

pcdmislaser.chm

pcdmisnc.chm

pcdmisportable.chm

pcdmisregistry.chm

pcdmistutor.chm

pcdmisvision.chm

Is RH somehow still doing something to it even though technically I'm not using it to compile? Is there some other setting or file somewhere that could be controlling this or is it just a compiler bug that I've never noticed?

How can I make RH 7 uninstall completely?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:01:19 GMT

I have a Win 7 64-bit machine.

I have both RH 7 (from standalone product) and RH 9 (from tech comm 3) installed on my system. I want to uninstall RH 7. My main reason for uninstalling is I have an ExtendScript (.jsx file) that is launched inside a batch file, but it instead always tries to launch RH 7 instead of RH 9.

Anyway, I used Control Panel to remove RH 7, and it went through the process but now it no longer appears in my program group nor in the Programs and Features in Control Panel.

However, I can still browse to RH 7 and launch it.

Has anyone else run across this? How do I completely uninstall this version?

Many thanks!

Easily remove in-line Conditional Build Tags?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:22:54 GMT

I'm wondering if there's an easy way to remove all Conditional Build Tags (CBT) inside a topic. Has anyone come up with a quick way to do this?

The problem I'm running into is I want to remove some CBTs on some list items. But it's not easy to remove the CBTs because the right-click menu item to deselect the CBT is grayed out unless I select a certain sub-set of the list just right. Sometimes this even happens on a single sentence. I have to select a part of the sentence and remove that part first and then the other part. It seems due to in-line formatting that's affecting this. I'm hoping there's an easier way. Any scripts out there that do this?

I can probably figure out how to do it in Notepad++ with regular expression pattern matching, but that's a hassle if there's an easier solution.

I'm using RH 9.02.271.

Options to improve chm compression?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 17:21:30 GMT

Alright, some background: Our largest RH project when compiled into the chm (compiled html help) output is approx 46 mb huge with 2482 topics and thousands of images. It was originally a Doc-to-Help project that was converted into RH when we switched back in 2004, so most of the images are in gif. But since 2004, we started adding new images as jpg files. Some bmps and pngs have sneaked in as well (141 bmps, 665 jpg, 2864 gif, and 4 png).

I'm getting some push back from our systems people to see if we can drop the file size for our chm, because supporting 17 languages + the other smaller helps we distribute is making things bloated/unweildy I guess.

My bmps have the largest file size. I tried converting those to jpg files and rebuilt the help today, but it didn't seem to help much--in fact the file size increased slightly. This makes me think The compression for bmps seems to be pretty darn good.

What's the best image format to use for optimal compression/clarity?

Also, are there other ways/things to do to improve the chm compression? Or is this just a factor of too many images/topcis?

Is there a way to define header / footers prior to generating the printed output?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:18:27 GMT

RH 9 - latest patch

Win 7 64-bit

Word 2010

Is there a way to define a doc's header / footers somewhere in RH prior to generating the printed output? I would like to cut down on as much post processing as possible when generating a Word document.

Command line generation errors in log. How do I fix this?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:16:13 GMT

Version: RH 9 (latest version)

OS: Windows 7, 64-bit

Output: CHM

I have a batch file that uses RH's command line generation functionality to generate our CHMs regularly.

The command line works for my other projects. But I have one project that has three different CHMs outputted, and each chm from this one project always fails.

Each of the three log file generated contains info along these lines.

Adobe (R) RoboHelp Project Command Line Compiler version 9.0.0.228

Project: d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\toolkitmodules\PC-DMIS Toolkit Modules.xpj

Layout: Toolkit Modules-Miscellaneous.

Output: D:\DocProjects\Outputs\common_chm\toolkitmodules.chm.

Scanning project for compilation....

Error: Failed to scan all the project files. Please use RoboHelp to recover the project.

Unexpected Error: Failed to prepare single source data for RHCL. Please try to compile it in RoboHTML.

Any ideas? By the way, these helps compile fine within RH itself.

Clicking on TOC Item Jumps to Previous Identical Entry. How to highlight the selected one?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:42:23 GMT

Win 7, 64 bit

RH 9 (latest patch)

HtmlHelp (CHM) output

I have many TOC pages that are identical.

For example, in our software some toolbar icons are repeated on different screens. In the built CHM help, if I click on a later identical page reference in our TOC, the TOC automatically jumps focus to the first entry. It doesn't stay on the selected entry.

This causes confusion as all of a sudden the user is in an entirely different context. How can I get it to highlight the selected item and not jump to the first reference?

RH 9. Including a Topic Marked with Two Separate Topic-Level Conditional Build Tags?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:47:35 GMT

I'm using RH 9 (latest patch) on a Windows 7, 64-bit. Primary output is HtmlHelp (chm)

We have a single RH help project that supports several related products, so there's a bunch of CBTs I use.

The problem I'm seeing is with topic-level CBTs.

Suppose I have a topic that I only want used in product A and in product B, but not in product D and E.

I apply topic-level CBTs and mark product A and product B.

However, in product B, I don't want to include product A htms, so I exclude product A. But since both those CBTs are marked at the topic level, the topic is excluded.

My way around this is to clear the topic-level CBTs, but then all topics that have their CBTs cleared, end up inlcuded in all my other help outputs, at least when using the search functionality.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Command Prompt Generation Gives HH.exe - No Disk Error ??

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:50:43 GMT

Windows 7 64-bit

RH 9.02.271

Ok. I'm trying out the command prompt generation for an HtmlHelp output for the first time.

I followed the RH documentation to the best of my ability and came up with the following:

rhcl "d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\vision\PC-DMIS Vision.xpj" -l "Vision Common CHM" -o D:\DocProjects\Outputs\common_chm\

The first parameter launches the project, the second defines the build layout, and the third the output.

It generates a help file. But I have these questions / issues:

1) Is there a log file generated to determine if there were problems in the compilation? If so, where?

2) Is there a way to specify the output chm name? It seems to be basing the name off of the xpj filename instead of getting it from the name defined in the layout. I want the file name to be "pcdmisvision.chm". It's giving me "PC-DMIS Vision.chm". It's not a big deal because I can use other command prompt commands to rename it. But still... it'd be nice.

3) When I launch the generated help I'm getting this strange hh.exe - No Disk error:

Clicking any of the buttons shows the above message again. But after clicking three times, it eventually launches the help:

But it launches with this topic as the default... maybe because it's alphabetically the first? It's certainly not going to the default topic specified in the layout. Plus the Index and Contents tabs are missing. I have the hhc and hhk file defined in the project and specified in the layout. The Search and Favorites tabs are working. The Glossary tab doesn't contain any entries (though it should).

If I generate the exact same layout inside of RH everything is generated as expected and desired: TOC, starting page, no hh.exe error...

Anyone else experiencing similar issues? This funcionality seems very buggy to me.

How can I resolve these issues?

Thanks in advance!

Best way to handle duplicate headings stemming from linked TOC book?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:40:00 GMT

What's the best way to handle duplicate topic titles stemming from TOC books that contain links to a topic that you want to have appear in the body? The problem I've had for years now is that the TOC generates one heading, and the topic itself generates one heading.This results in duplicate headings in the printed output.

I have a large ~2500 topic project I have to print every release, and to date we've been handling it in post-build word macros, but it's not 100% effective, so we're looking to fix this issue on the source side of the fence. On some of our smaller projects, we've actually marked with the heading in the topic itself with the Online CBT and that seems to work. We're thinking of doing the same to our huge project unless there's a better way of handling this. Any suggestions?

ExtendScript Help - Why am I getting "prompt is not a function" error?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:36:39 GMT

Hello RH friends,

I need to search through my 2200+ topic project, find any topics that use a certain image in the source and then open up that file in the wysiwyg editor to visually see what's happening to the conditional markings on those topics. I need to open them in chunks since I've determined there are some 600+ topics that has the image I'm looking for. Seems like something a script would be able to handle. Does anyone have a script that does something like this or something similar?

Anyway, I started messing around in the script editor with a test script to figure some of this out, but I get an error right off the bat when I try using the standard js prompt method to capture a text

string. I have these two lines of code in my script:

var strText = prompt ("Type a string to search for. Topics with that string will then open in the RH viewer.","i_chiclet.gif","String to Find");

alert (strText);

Running it directly from within the script editor, the prompt command works fine.

However, running the script from within RH--which is what I need to do for it to work on the current project to look at, I get a message that says:

"prompt is not a function."

What am I missing?

I'm using RH 9.02.271

Windows 7 64-Bit with adminstrator access

Some child chms don't display topic in topic pane when TOC item is clicked

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:16:35 GMT

Okay. I'm not sure what's going on.

We have a master project and various sub-chms that get merged into the TOC of that master project. We have a fairly new sub RH project named "Toolkit Modules" that generates three additional sub chms that are also merged into the master help. They appear at the very end of the master project's TOC:

<10 other merged chms>

toolkitmodules.chm

toolkitmodules_blade.chm

toolkitmodules_vwmp.chm

All the topics for the three toolkit modules chms exist in the Toolkit Modules project and are conditionally marked with topic-level build tags so that the right topics appear in their respective chm.

I compiled the three toolkit chms and then put them in the master root directory so that when the master help is generated, they get included properly.

At first glance, all three of these chms appear to be working fine in the master TOC. I can expand and view the master help's TOC for the sub projects just fine, but clicking on a TOC entry does not display

the topics for these two chms in the topic pane:

toolkitmodules_blade.chm

toolkitmodules_vwmp.chm

I'm not sure why.

If I double-click and open up the individual chms from within Windows and view their contents, the topics appear as expected in those chms. It's just when merged, these latter two chms don't do anything from the TOC side. However, I have verified that the topics are indeed getting merged in, because I can use the Search tab to see the topics. In fact, the Locate button on the toolbar even expands the correct TOC and highlights the entry that matches. So something's just not working from the TOC side.

Any ideas?

I'm using RH 9.02.271

Windows 7 64-bit

HtmlHelp output (chm)

Thanks!

Some child chms in merged help system are not displaying topics

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:23:11 GMT

Can someone please look at my post here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4315182#4315182

I need some help. I can't figure out why some child chm topics are not displaying when their TOC entries are clicked. I *think* something in my master project is causing the problem, but I have no idea what.

Please post your comments in that thread.

Thanks in advance!

RH 9 (latest)

HtmlHelp output (chm)

Any idea why RH often defaults to a (None) style sheet?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:17:03 GMT

I have a default master page called Standard. It uses a custom style sheet.

It doesn't happen always, but often enough that it's a singular annoyance. Sometimes when I create a new topic it applies the master page, but for some reason the style sheet gets set to None.

I have to then go into topic properties to manually choose the style sheet, and then it's happy.

Any reason for this happening?

I'm using the latest RH 9 on a Win 7 64-bit machine.

Changing the editor for Multi-File Find and Replace

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:59:15 GMT

When I click edit on a file it opens it up inside Word. Anyway to get this tool to open the topic inside RH? Or inside another text editor like Notepad++? I don't trust Word to leave my code like I want it.

Thanks in advance,

Jared

RH 7 (latest patches) authoring in RoboHTML

Win 7 64-bit machine

Trying to save an RTF Report from Tools | Reports freezes RH

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:56:42 GMT

I'm using RH 9, on Windows 7 64-bit OS. Wondering if anyone else is seeing this problem. I go to Tools | Reports and choose the Conditional Build Tag report. After it scans the project and gives the results I choose Save as RTF and then RH freezes. It is happening repeatedly not only on my projects but on the Salesbuilder sample project that ships with RH.

Is anyone else seeing this?

Conditional Build Tags automatically appearing

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:38:50 GMT

I'm running RH 9.0.2.271 on Win 7, 64 bit machine.

I have this procedure in the WYSIWYG editor, and I want to mark the yellow icon (highlighted in yellow below) with the Online conditional build tag (green hash highlight):

So, I select that CBT, and so far everything looks fine in the WYSIWYG editor.

However, if I go to the HTML editor to check the HTML and then go back to the WYGIWYG editor, it's screwed up and looks like this:

Notice that the conditional online text is automatically covering steps 4 and 5 in the procedure. I thought this bug was supposedly exterminated in build 9.0.1, but seems to be happening... for me anyway. Any solutions to this? I've tried numerous ways of applying the CBT to that icon and it still ends up spanning the following two paragaphs.

Keeping Temporary Files Around? Need properly formatted .ali file for a CHM help.

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:59:16 GMT

As part of our localization process, I need to access the .ali file that is in the temporary folder. Back in RH 7, I could just copy the .ali file from the RH project, but in RH 9 it's now in an XML format and isn't in a format directly usable with CHM files. However, when RH compiles the CHM file, the .ali is changed into a format I need. Unfortunately, if I decompile the CHM file, the .ali file isn't there. So my only route is to grab it from the temporary build folder. If I'm compiling a large file, it's not a big deal because I have time to make a copy of the .h file in the temporary folder and paste it somewhere outside of the folder but for smaller projects the temporary folder is around for just a little while before it is removed.

Does anyone know of a way to keep the temporary build folder around after compilation of a CHM file finishes so I can access this file?

Thanks,

Jared

RH 9.02

Text Missing from Exported "Chapter"

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:44:51 GMT

I'm using RH 9.02. I'm generating some printed documentation of some of our German help content.

One of our chapters I'm generating is fairly small; it only has 56 topics. They're all under a single Heading 2 topic in the TOC. However, for some topics, I'm noticing that only the heading text is generated along with an image, but no body text!

For example, here's some pics of some original topics in RH:

And here's the generated output in Word:

If it helps, here's the contents (in HTML) for the first topic "Endnummer":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<head>

<title>Endnummer</title>

A:visited {

color: #800080;

}

A:link {

color: #0000ff;

}

/*]]>*/</style>

span.hcp1 {

font-family: Arial;

}

/*]]>*/</style>

</head>

width="1" height="1">

</object>

<h3 style="text-indent: 0in;">Endnummer</h3>

<p class="Figure"><img src="22_flow_files/image003.gif" none;="" border-style:=""

none;"="" alt="" style="border-style: ;" border="0" /></p>

<p class="BodyText">Über das Feld <b><span class="hcp1">Endnummer</span></b>

wird PC-DMIS mitgeteilt, wie oft eine Schleife innerhalb des Werkstückprogramms

zu wiederholen ist. Diese Zahl entspricht in der Regel der Anzahl der

von der Spannvorrichtung gehaltenen Werkstücke (oder Werkstückmuster)

in x- (y- oder z-) Richtung. PC-DMIS fordert außerdem zur Angabe der Startnummer

des Werkstücks (Musters) auf.</p>

<div style="border-top: none; border-left: none; border-bottom: none; border-right: none;

padding: 1.0pt 0in 1.0pt 0in; margin-left: 0.0in; margin-right: 0in;">

<p class="Note"><b style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="hcp1">Beispiel:</span></b>

Es liegen 10 Werkstücke in X- (Y- oder Z-) Richtung vor und Sie möchten

mit der Position Nummer 5 beginnen. Geben Sie 10 (zehn) in das Feld

<b><span class="hcp1">Endnummer</span></b> und 5 (fünf) in das Feld

<b><span class="hcp1">Startnummer</span></b> ein.</p>

</div>

<?rh-region_start type="footer" style="width: 100%; position: relative;" ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><hr style="color: #d9e4da; background-color: #d9e4da;"

width="300" align="center" /><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-cbt_start condition="Online" ?><p style="text-align: center;"> <script

language="javascript" src="../../feedback_script.js" style="x-condition: Online;"

type="text/javascript"></script></p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

<?rh-region_end type="footer" ?>

</body>

</html>

I'm not excluding any conditional build tags from the output, since this German project was created from a straight .CHM file that was decompiled and imported into RH.

This is frustrating. I cannot trust the output I'm getting when there are such obvious holes, what else is going on that I'm not aware of? German isn't my native language so this is a bit difficult to troubleshoot.

Any idea what's going on? RH 7 had issues in printed output, but at least I knew what they were.

Thanks in advance to any ideas you have.

Printed output problem-RH 9 prints drop down text above its parent text. It used to come out below!

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:26:17 GMT

Hmmm. I found a potentionally nasty problem for our printed output.

Our documentation project uses many drop-down links (hyper links where the text drops down beneath the link in the next paragraph). The documentation was written with it expecting the text to come out below the text.

For example, suppose I have this in my RH propject. When I preview it, or when I compile into our HTML Help (chm) output, it looks like this:

Text String A

String A drop down text appears here

Text String B

String B drop down text appears here

Text String C

String C drop down text appears here

However, in the printed output, it generates like this:

String A drop down text appears here

String B drop down text appears here

String C drop down text appears here

Text String A

Text String B

Text String C

This is my first time generating printed output in RH 9. Previously we were using RH 7 and it generated as expected, with the drop down text coming out below.

Is anyone else seeing this? Do you know of a setting or something that might be able to fix this?

Configuration.xml doesn't seem to be working...

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:51:41 GMT

I'm trying to update an AIR help via the internet and using a configuration.xml file for the first time. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working when I tested it. I'm using RH 9.01.

The help, according to this screen, expects to see it on a configuration subdirectory below where the help .exe is installed.

I also have the pathway pointing to update.xml defined here as well as in the configuration.xml file. Is it needed in this screen if it's in the config file?

Here's what I have in our config file:

I've placed a later version of the .AIR and the update.xlm in the web directory defined in the config file but no update occurs. I was able to do it from our previous update (without using the config file). It seems like the config file is the thing making it not work, but maybe I'm overlooking something. Any thoughts?

Installing AIR Help through another Installer?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:32:35 GMT

We're developing a WPF application and according to our devs, they'd like to install the AIR help through our own installer rather than use a separate setup process. Their concerns are:

1) It's a pain to have the user have to go through another setup process.

2) We'd like to be able to control through our installer where the help ends up as well as control the uninstalling

of the AIR help when the app is uninstalled.

So is there a way to package an AIR help install through our own setup process, and bypass Adobe's installer? If so, how?

It looks like back in 2009 another user was considering doing this in this post here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2286578#2286578 and it didn't look like this was recommended or possible, but maybe things have changed in 2011?

My second question is if we must use Adobe's Installer, is there a way to run it silently in the background without any user interaction?

Thanks in advance.

Jared

RH 9, Local AIR Help.

Using configuration.xml to support multiple AIR help versions and automatic updates?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 22:12:59 GMT

I want to make sure I'm understanding all this correctly.

I think this is in line with the solution on configuration files and versioning on Peter Grainge's site:

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/air/9/air_rh9.htm

I'm tinkering with the configuration.xml file to try to control automatic air help updates for different language installs of our software so that when an auto update takes place it doesn't pull down info from a different language location. I also need to make sure that if a someone has Version 1 of our software installed that they don't pull down the Version 2 updates and so on.

Right now, suppose we have an English and a German help and our software is at Version 1.

The English help is getting installed to
"c:\program files (x86)\Portable AIR Help English\"
The German help is getting installed to
"c:\program files (x86)\Portable AIR Help German\"

In the configuration.xml file, I need to specify a different location for each language that will be receiving internet updates to the help, right?

For example, in my config file for our English help, I'm thinking of having this setting:

updatexmllocation="http://<our website location>/updates/english/v1/updates.xml"

And in my config file for our German help, I'm thinking of having this:

updatexmllocation="http://<our website location>/updates/german/v1/updates.xml"

This should force them to pull from diff locations, right?

Then when Version 2 of our software comes out, I'm thinking we would update the configuration.xml location so it pulls updates from v2:

updatexmllocation="http://<our website location>/updates/english/v2/updates.xml"

updatexmllocation="http://<our website location>/updates/german/v2/updates.xml"

Now, what about a customer who wants to install Version 2 but wants to keep his Version 1 AIR help's Favorites, Comments, etc? It sounds like we would just need to install the Version 2 config file where the AIR help expects it to be, overwriting the Version 1 config file, and then the Version 2 automatic updates would take place leaving the customer's favorites etc intact?

Problem with always having to re-import .htms

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:49:26 GMT

Howdy folks.

Background: Nearly two years ago (was using RH 7 at the time) we put our main help project under Mercurial source control--with somewhat less-than-desireable results. The way we have Mercurial setup, we basically have a development branch and a release branch. After our developers code something and it passes various tests, reviews, and is documented, it gets moved over (or transplanted) into the release branch and then pushed onto the server for anyone in our company to pull down into their local Mercurial repository. We only have myself and another writer who currently make changes inside the help project, and we communicate with each other so we're not working on the same topic at the same time. Whenever we release a version, I “update” my folder structure to the release branch. This pulls in all the changes that have made on the release branch, including our RH topic edits into my current help project. Then I can build the help with just the content on the release branch.

Problem: But something broke down along the way. I'm now using RH 9. I don't think the issue I'm seeing is a RH problem exactly, but it seems the way RH handles files and folders may have an affect on what's happening. Here's what's happening:

Whenever I update my help content to either the release branch or back to the development branch, I repeatedly have to re-import some .htm files back into the project. For example, I have a folder in my project named 13_hardware_topics. I always--or nearly always--have to re-import the .htms in that folder. Somehow they’re getting removed at least from whatever mechanism RH uses to determine files in a project. The .htm files still exist in the directory and haven't been manually deleted. RH just doesn't always recognize them. The folder, however, still exists inside of RH. Once they’re imported and I continue working on that branch, things are fine. At least things are fine until I have to switch back to a different branch, and then I have to re-import many of these same files again.

Also, we don’t track our CPD file in Mercurial, so we do end up with the problem of the CPD file from our development branch staying inside our release branch or vice versa when we do the branch switch. This isn’t too big of a problem as long as I remember to delete my CPD file before opening the project.

What file tells RH that a topic is part of a project? The .hhp file? Or is it the the .fpj file? Or something entirely different? Or does it get this info from more than one source? If so, what does it look at first?

My guess is that is what is screwed up (or gets screwed up on a branch change). I feel like shouting something like, "Massive hull damage Captain! Structural damage at 35% and climbing!" That's what the innards of this help project feels like.

Keeping a Comment in Generated Output?

forums_noreply@adobe.com — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:50:16 GMT

So, the way our localization process is currently setup, we generate a chm file from RH, then decompile the chm to get all the .htms etc and then we send the dcompiled info to the translators. I'm looking for a way to include author comments for our translators into the source and then have those comments show up in the final output but not show up visible to our customers. Any suggestions on how to do this?

I've tried creating a conditional build tags called "TranslationInstructions".

But something like this in the source...

<?rh-cbt_start condition="TranslationInstructions" ?><p class="BodyText">Test

instructions for the translator.</p><?rh-cbt_end ?>

...shows up as this in the output:

<p class="BodyText">Test

instructions for the translator.</p>

That doesn't help because it pulls out the conditoinal idendifying bits.

I also tried doing a standard HTML comment, like this:

But this is excluded completely from the generated output.

Any other ideas? Is there a way to define a custom tag that gets passed through to the output but that isn't recognized and displayed in a browser (help viewer)?