map id's not working

[cmd123]

Hi all

My map id's are not working properly.  I am getting the defintions to display properly but for some reason my books on the left side (t.o.c) do not expand and go to where the topic came from.  The left side has the books collapsed and stay on the name of the file.

Any idea what I need to do?

thanks

Caryn

[cmd123]

Hi

I noticed no one has replied to my question.

Can anyone help me?

thanks

[RoboColum_n_]

I could be wrong (I'm not a developer) but I believe this has to do with the call being made from the application. Can you confirm whether you are using CHM, WebHelp or some other output and whether you have merged help?

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

[cmd123]

I am selecting Microsoft html as my output and generating a .chm file.

Does that help?

thanks

[RoboColum_n_]

That does help but can you tell us whether you are using a merged CHM? If so, your call is potentially to a topic in a particular help file that uses the TOC from another. In order to help further we need to know which road to go down.

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

[cmd123]

chm

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Caryn,

Can you confirm that you have set the "Auto Synchronize TOC" property for your help window? With this set, the TOC entry for the currently displayed topic should automatically be selected when the topic is opened, whether programmatically or not.

Here are some instructions on how to set the "Auto Synchronize TOC" property:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/RoboHelp/8.0/RoboHTML/WS355AEF7F-34ED-4124-BC8F-B27DE7A228E1.html

Pete

[cmd123]

Pete

I checked and my auto synchornize t.o.c check box was not checked so i selected it.

Do I need to enter a file name in Custom image file?

I saved and generated my file.

Tested my map id's and they did not work.

I dont have to use ?what's this feature for field context sensitive help, do I?  Cant I just use IDH prefix before my field name and map these fields?

thanks

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, again,

> Do I need to enter a file name in Custom image file?

No, that's an optional facility that is unrelated to what you want to do. In fact, the facility to replace the icons in the TOC pane with your own icons is so crippled as to be not worth using. (The problem is in HTML Help itself, not RoboHelp.)

> Tested my map id's and they did not work.

Just checking: did they work before you enabled the Synchronize TOC feature? Have you made any other changes that could break the context help mappings?

> I dont have to use ?what's this feature for field context sensitive help, do I?

No, you don't need to, but this is something that has to be agreed with the developer whose software you're documenting. The type of command that the developer uses to invoke help determines the method you use to provide help -- or, put another way, if you want to deliver help in a certain way then the developer has to use the appropriate command to invoke it. I believe there's extensive information in RoboHelp's online help about this, or you could take a look at some of the resources listed here:

http://www.mshelpwiki.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=HTMLHelpArticles

Pete

[cmd123]

Pete

No I have not done any changes to the map id's or the mapping I setup.  I did search the forum and found out I should also change the window properties in project setup pod.  I gave my window a name for the file and selected auto synchorize t.o.c check box and saved that setting.

Generated my file and went to my application and pressed F1 and the book files stil did not go to the related topic.

Any other ideas?

thanks for your help

Caryn

[cmd123]

Cant I just use IDH prefix before my field name and map these fields?  I cant get the field level help (context sensitive help) to work.

Do the developers need to enter IDH before the map id number?  For example, IDH_1 = service date.

Do the developers enter 1 or IDH_1?

thanks

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Caryn, and sorry for the delay in posting a follow-up.

If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend reading the topics on context-sensitive help in the RoboHelp documentation. You can access them here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/RoboHelp/RHTML/7.0/Context-sensitive/About_context-sensitive_help.htm

Between you, you and your software developers need to decide how best to provide context-sensitive help (as window-level help or field-level help) and then work together to make this happen. Typically, the developer inserts help calls in the application source code and then generates a map file that pairs each context integer (say, "1") with a topic ID (say, "IDH_SAMPLE"). The author then imports the map file into the help project and assigns each mapping to a help topic.

Alternatively, the author can create the map file and then hand it to the developer for inclusion in the application.

I'm unclear about which of these two approaches you're following. Can you say a little more about how you've obtained the map file that you're seeking to use in your help project? If this came from the developer, you'd want to leave the mappings as they are and just assign them to the required topics.

Pete

[cmd123]

Pete

I think I finally figured it out today

Thanks

Caryn