Skin not loading on Chinese or Japanese machines

[Guest]

Webhelp will not work correctly on Internet Explorer if you attempt to view it on a machine in Chinese (both simplified and traditional) or Japanese. The same occurs if you try it on a machine in English and you change the regional settings to one of the languages above. The skin will not load (no frames) and the TOC will show wrong characters and tags.

I have not yet tried if this might also happen in Cyrillic languages too.

I have found out that this issue has to do with the fact that some .htm webhelp files do not contain the correct encoding information. Including the UTF-8 line (<meta http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">) in the Meta section of all .htm files in the webhelp (excluding topics, which will normally have this code already) will solve the problem.

Of course, Robohelp should include correct encoding in all .htm files requiring it, but it is not doing it for some reason, causing errors like this one. I have already reported this bug to Adobe.

[Guest]

Are you talking about any particular version of RH? I understood that RH8's XHTML and XML files are encoded in UTF-8, but the encoding could very well be a problem in some files in RH7 (and I know it's a problem with earlier versions). If it's just an RH7 and earlier problem, I don't expect that Adobe will take any action. If it's RH7, which I'm using, this is great to know about.

Ben

GryphonMountain.net

[Guest]

I am using RH7 (version 7.03.001). I don't know if this will have been fixed in RH8, but that would be easy to find out. Adobe has already replied to me saying that they will look into this.

[perttime]

Did you get an answer?

I seem to have the same problem:

- Generating WebHelp with RH7

- Using Windows XP Professional (SP3, not sure what SP our testers have)

- Changed "Regional and Language Options", both Regional Options and Advanced tabs, to Hong Kong Chinese.

-> Open Hong Kong Chinese help from SW, or by double clicking the starting HTML file:

- On IE6, only a frame with topic content is displayed, the rest is blank

- On Firefox 3, helps displays OK.

When English Regional Settings are in use Help displays correctly.

Not tried with a "real" Chinese OS, yet.

Korean has the same problem.

[Guest]

Thanks for your post. I have tested it on native machines in Chinese and other Asiatic languages and the problem is still there. No one has answered yet, but you can fix that doing what I explained in my first post. I reported this bug to Adobe so I hope they will fix it soon. In the meantime, I am afraid you will have to add the UTF-8 line to all HTM files manually.

[perttime]

I think I can get an engineer to make some script that adds the charset definition automatically in my output.

I'd hate to do this manually to a lot of languages.

[perttime]

Adding the charset definition line to all HTML files does not seem to help in my case. Still generating helps with RH7.

BUT... I have other problems with help functionality too

- also reproduced the same thing when launching a help in other languages, except English, on XP with HK Chinese Regional Options on. (tried Dutch and Finnish).

- NOT reproduced on Firefox 3.5

- NOT reproduced with Helps generated with Robohelp 8 trial. (tried Arabic and Finnish only)

[Guest]

Did you try adding the charset definition to ALL html files in the WEBHELP output? This is something you should do in all webhelp output files, not on the project htm files. I am not sure which htm files in webhelp output should actually have this line, so I include it in all of them and it worked fine. I am attaching a photo where you can see the files to which I added the charset definition.

I think this should work fine for you in any language.

[perttime]

I went through your list and found 2 output files in the Hong Kong help without the definition. Added definition to 'whcsh_home.htm' and 'whskin_tw.htm'

Also, the definition is added to .htm files in 'whdata' and 'whgdata' folders.

Still have the problem in HK Chinese.

Haven't had chance to try other languages/Regional Options yet.

[Guest]

That is strange....

Are you replacing <head> with <head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">   ?

Bear also in mind that Internet Explorer should be set to default encoding settings: View- -> Encoding --> Auto-select. This is usually the default configuration on any browser.

If it does not work on your pc, I would try it on any another computer and see what happens.

Good luck

[perttime]

Yes: replacing <head> with <head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

The two .htm files I mentioned in the previous post did not have <head> tags, so I put the definition right after <html>. Also tried adding head tags around the charset definition but that did not help either.

For some reason, I did not have "View- -> Encoding --> Auto-select" selected on IE, but selecting it did not help any with viewing the output. (Still trying with HK Chinese only)

[Guest]

This is a bit strange because I had exactly the same problem and I could fix it doing what I mentioned in my post. I don't know what you may be doing differently. As I said before, I suggest trying it on several computers, and different versions of IE if available.

[perttime]

I made a bug report about my Firefox problems and got a response:

---

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

Apply RH 7.01 and 7.02 patches and then try again.

You can download the patches from

---

Now my RH version number is 7.02.001.

First test suggest that this may have fixed this issue too.

[Guest]

Thanks, however I seem to have a later version installed: 7.03.001. I think this one is the latest available for RH7.

[perttime]

Just a thought:

If you have 7.03, does it necessarily mean that 01 and 02 are also installed?

I suspect you don't get to 03 without installing the 03 patch.

[Peter Grainge]

You have to install the patches in sequence.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips