Can I use Japanese in Index of RH 6

[AGsMM]

Hi

I just got the localized files from our vendor and found that the localized index always gives an error.

" An invalid argument was encounted."

To find the root cause, I deleted the index file (.hhk), then open my project. Everything works fine.

Then, I tried to add an English word in index, no problem.
Then, I added a Japanese word in index, the same error appeared.

Does anyone here know the reason? does that mean I cannot use Japanese in Index in RH6?

I must use japanese in Index.

BTW, everything worked when I used Japanese in index of RH5.

Thanks,

[Guest]

What is your output (CHM, WebHelp, etc.)? Is the error happening when you're working in RoboHelp, or is it when you're trying to view the index in your generated help output?

The first thing I would try is opening up both the Japanese HHK and the English HHK and compare the code. Make sure the Japanese has all code intact, including punctuation. It's possible that the translation process munged the code, and one missing quotation mark or semicolon could break the whole deal.

If that's not the problem, try making sure your HHK is saved in UTF-8 format. I would think that this would affect how the characters display (whether you get Japanese vs. garbage characters) rather than cause errors, but it doesn't hurt to check. To make sure it's in UTF-8, open the HHK in Notepad, then go to File > Save As and save it with UTF-8 for the encoding.

I had a Japanese index working in RH6, but it was with FlashHelp, which has some unique factors affecting how double-byte characters display.

Hope this helps,

Ben

[AGsMM]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your reply.

The error is happening when I am working in RH.

I compared hhk files in English and Japanese. There is no difference, including punctuation. The same error happans even when I try to add a Japanese word into the index of a new project in RH6. It is very easy to reproduce it. I think it is not the index file that causes the error.

I also tried to save the index in UTF-8. It does not help.

Since you can use Japanese in Index in your RH6 - flashhelp. I guess I can use Japanese in Index in my RH6-html project. If it is not the Index file, maybe it is my settings. Have you done any special settings related to language when you are using Japanese in Index, for example, settings of regional and languages of OS.

MS HTML workshop can compile my project without error, but it has its own problem. It does not know the buildtag of RH6. So it is not a good choice. Of course, if no other choice, I can do some work manually on those RH buildtags. It is really bad and should be my last choice.


Thanks,

AGsMM

[Guest]

Because RH6 doesn't support Japanese, you will probably have to edit your index by hand outside of RH. I had submitted my index to translators and got it back in Japanese, so I did no editing of the Japanese index inside RH. I just put it in my Japanese project source files over the top of the English index in Windows Explorer.

Have you tried searching these forums? I've seen a number of threads on Japanese specifically, so if you search for that term, you'll get some results with suggestions that you can try.

When I was using RH6, making the Japanese work in FlashHelp was a matter of doing the following:

1. Using Arial Unicode MS for my fonts.
2. Editing the skin files in Flash so that Japanese was embedded.
3. Checking the files in the whgdata and whxdata folders (in the generated help) and making sure all the Japanese showed up correctly.

RH7 has better support for double-byte languages (which saves me having to do #3 above), but that may not be an option for you.