Add RH7 menu command?

[garythebadger]

Is it possible to add a new command to the RH7 toolbar menu that we can program to launch a script? RH7 help shows how to add/move/delete the standard commands that come with RH7, but I did not see a way to add a "free-form" user-configurable custom-script command. Sounds wierd, but we have a legit reason for needing this feature.

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Gary,

You can use the ExtendScript Tool in RH8 to do this.

[garythebadger]

Excellent, thank you very much.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Gary

Not trying to rain on Colum's parade here, but I think the answer should be amended to read this way instead:

You *MIGHT* be able to use the ExtendScript Tool in RH8 to do this.

Unless Colum is aware of something I'm not (which is entirely possible as I never claim to know it all about anything) you can't create your own scripts and assign them to the menu.

RoboHelp 7 ushered in an ability to allow us to modify the menus in RoboHelp. But only to a certain extent. We can't, for example, create a menu that lists all of our styles. Sure would be nice if we could, as then we could assign shortcut keys to the new menu items to rapidly apply a particular style. I tested in RoboHelp 8. The core scripts are available for assigning to a menu, but not any new scripts you add later. Although, in typing this I'm thinking that maybe you could duplicate one of the core scripts, gut it of original content and insert your own content to accomplish it. Maybe that would work. But only if the scripting allows you do build an action that duplicates what the script is you have.

Can you maybe tell is what your script does/should do? If so, maybe we can test further to see if it's even feasible in the scripting offered by RoboHelp 8.

Cheers... Rick

[garythebadger]

Rick,

Here's the scoop. I am told that, for security reasons, the server where our customer-facing RoboHelp WebHelp resides needs certain security applied...something about FrontPage Extensions. We've done this by publishing to a temporary server, then copying all the files to the final destination server, rather than publishing directly from RoboHelp to the final destination. So, we want to add a new menu item in RH7 that allows the RH7 client user to launch that file copy command through a simple script (which our in-house people can write).

[vivek_k-GfmzA1]

Hi Rick and Gary,

Let me chip in and tell you how you can add scripts to the menu item. It shows up all the script files (.jsx) in the directory <RH8 Install Dir>\RoboHTML\presets\scripts. If you add your scripts to this folder it will start showing up in the Tools > Scripts menu.
Ideally it should have picked up from <App Data>\Adobe\RoboHTML\8.00\scripts folder where the scripts are by default stored. We will look into it.

Vivek.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Vivek

Hmmm, could have sworn I'd done it that way and the new script didn't show for me. I do suppose one of the following could be at play though.

* I'm using RoboHelp HTML build 203
* I didn't close and restart RoboHelp HTML after creating the new script - maybe that's a necessary step?
* For my test, I just duplicated an existing script and gave it a new name - maybe something internally senses that?

Cheers... Rick

[garythebadger]

Vivek and Rick,

Would you please confirm we must upgrade to RH8 to add a menu item? If so, it is not worth the $500 x2 users to upgrade from RH7, just to get this one feature; we'll just place the stand-alone script icon on the RH7 user's PC desktop, rather than inside the RH7 application.

Gary

[Captiv8r]

Hi Gary

To add a menu item pointing to a script is a feature of RoboHelp 8. You are able to configure a menu to launch one of the new RoboHelp 8 scripts.

RoboHelp 7 allows you to add a menu or change a menu, but to my knowledge will not help you point to a script from the menu. (At least I haven't found a way to do that yet)

Cheers... Rick

[Captiv8r]

Hello again Gary

Okay, I may have something here. I'm not sure how your guys are scripting things, but if your developers are able to create things in the form of a simple DOS batch file, you could add a tool to the Toolbox pod. You could then have a menu command that opens the Toolbox pod where they would then launch the file.

So far that's the best I can seem to come up with.

Cheers... Rick

[garythebadger]

I see how to do this in RH7, and I've asked for a sample EXE from the developer to test it.
It will be simple DOS commands. Thanks!!