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switch between project versions?

New Here ,
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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Hey everyone

my job just purchased Robohelp Office and my boss has given me the (doubtful?) honor of finding out how it works.

Now I seem to be getting along with the basics just fine, but now I need to know something I just can't seem to find on the internet: is it possible to switch between two versions of the same project?

I mean like, having one version of the help file published online, while working on an update on the same project without having it emidiately published. I thought I would have to use Robosource for that, but that doesn't seem to be it either... Can someone help me out here?

thanks!

greets,

C4B

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Community Expert ,
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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You need to understand the difference between source files and output files.

Source files are what you see in Project Manager. Output files are what you generate / publish when you go into the layouts. The options include webhelp and Microsoft HTML Help (CHM). Let's say you are going to create webhelp. You will work on your source files in RoboHelp where you can preview individual topics. When you want to see the whole system, you will generate the output and by default that goes to the !SSL! folder but you can change that in the first page of the wizard. There you can view how it is all looking, how it hangs together and so on. When you want to put it on a server, you will either publish it to a server or hand it over to your developers who will ensure it is put on customer servers.

Changing the source does not change what is in the !SSL! folder and generating alone does not change what is on the server.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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New Here ,
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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ok, so in that aspect, that means there's no way for me to save the previous version of my webhelp for later use except by creating a new project? I was hoping it would be possible to upload one version of webhelp, and if need be (for whatever reason at all) to reupload the older version.

Any suggestions on how I should go about that one?

thanks for the reply btw, that already helped me understand Robohelp a lot better

grtz,

C4B

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LEGEND ,
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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OK. Let's get down to basics. You start off with a brand new RH project. You start creating a few topics and significantly at this point you have no output. Just as Peter says a set of source files. At some point you need to generate your output from your source. You do so as Peter has described and a new set of files are created and published to the required location (e.g. intranet, web, etc.). When this happens, your source files remain exactly as they were before you created the output. You now need to make some amendments to the source. You go back in, amend the topics (maybe add new ones) and then re-generate the output. This by default overrides the previous set of output files. So you see that you can use the same set of source files to generate different sets of help updates.

That said, you can use your single source layouts to generate your output to go to different locations. Let's not go into that yet though unless you need to know.


Read the RoboColum(n) for mutterings on RoboHelp, Technical Communication Suite and technical communication.

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New Here ,
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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Thank you both for your kind reply. I think I now have an idea of how to go about it...Thanks again!

greets,

C4B

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Guest
Jun 03, 2009 Jun 03, 2009

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If you are not using source control, I recommend making a .zip file of the project source folder. (The folder is named with the project name and contains your working files, with the .xpj file and .cpd file in the root directory.)

Don't rename any of the folders, just give the .zip file a meaningful name, like myproject_20090603.

This is good for periodic backups (short periods) and for longer-term storage of milestone project versions. So you might end up keeping 4 or 5 .zips, as in this example:

myproject_20090601.zip

myproject_20090603.zip

myproject_v3_pub_20090605.zip (this is a .zip made immediately after you generated a version that was published)

To use an older version, do this:

  1. .zip the current project source files and put that someplace safe.
  2. Delete the current project source folder (yes, it's scary).
  3. Move the older version's .zip file to the project source location.
  4. Unzip the older version's .zip file. This should give you a project source folder with the same name but older content.
  5. Now you can work on the older version and/or regenerate the project - whatever you need to do.

This has saved my butt more than once!

HTH,

Elisa

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New Here ,
Jun 04, 2009 Jun 04, 2009

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I've got source control yes, I'll make sure to put your advice to the test. I like the sound of it already thanks for the tip and the reply!

greets,

C4B

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