RH8 .fpj files empty

[Margaret_Becker]

I converted my project from RH5. If I add a new folder or add files to the project, no updates are made to .fpj files. If I add a folder, the name of the folder is not added to the .fpj file in the parent folder. If I import files, the file names are not added to the .fpj file in the folder. All of the .fpj files in my image folders are empty. I have to create and update the .fpj files entirely by hand. Does anybody know what gives with this?

My image file names do not appear in the Project. How can I get them there without adding them one by one?

[Peter Grainge]

Do you have both patches applied?

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

I do indeed.

[Peter Grainge]

If you import a few of those topics into a new project, do the FPJs do their job? We haven't seen this issue before.

If that works, get a copy of the X5 backup and upgrade again. If not, perhaps a good bottle of wine?

Post back whatever happens.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

The .fpj files work ok on a new project. There doesn't seem to be an image folder anymore, though. The only images that are listed in the project are those that were in the root folder. The folders for the images are created, but they do not show up in the the RH project. What am I missing?

I can send the new project if that would help.

[Peter Grainge]

In Project Manager toggle the left icon. You will see the new view where you see what is in each folder or the old view where topics are in one list and images in another.

You said the FPJ files have nothing in them but had you not looked, would you have been aware? In other words, what is the effect? It's not right but I'm wondering what made you even look there.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

The effect was that the folders that I added to the project would appear in the Project list until I closed RH. The next time I opened RH, the folders would not be there unless I added the folders to the fpj files manually.

Maybe I just don't get how this should work. Here's the problem. In the screenshot, you can see that there is an image in this topic that is in the folder ../image/Topic_Illustrations/ and is named Arrowhead-001.png. Even though the image is in the topic, it does not show anywhere in the Project Manager. It doesn't matter which Project Manager view I use. I expect to see the image name listed in the RH project someplace, but I can't find it. Am I confused?

[Peter Grainge]

If I add a new folder or add files to the project, no updates are made to .fpj files. If I add a folder, the name of the folder is not added to the .fpj file in the parent folder. If I import files, the file names are not added to the .fpj file in the folder. All of the .fpj files in my image folders are empty. I have to create and update the .fpj files entirely by hand.

Let's go back to the first post. The problem was that if you added a folder it did not get added, neither did imported files. Also that image folders did not list the images.

The last bit is OK, images don't get shown, the FPJ is for folders and topic files only.

What I am not clear on is whether the FPJs show the topics that were present when you upgraded. However, I don't think that matters too much as the key problem is this project is not behaving. What I would do right now is upgrade that X5 project again, then run Update DHTML from the Tools menu.

Try that and let us know. The alternative is to import all the topics into a new project.

Let us know what happens.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

PG: "What I would do right now is upgrade that X5 project again, then run Update DHTML from the Tools menu."

Nope, it's too late for that. I had to move on, and I have now made many, many changes to the upgraded project and have done my best to work around the problems as they become a nuisance. Besides, I did all that a bunch of times when I first upgraded. I made a fresh upgrade at least three times.

Originally, the topic and image folders were simply not added to the project .fpj files or saved if I recreated them and imported the files again. I fixed this eventually by editing the .fpj files manually.

Now, I simply want my images to appear in the Project Manager. I don't understand why they don't, and it's a real problem as I cannot locate images that are referenced in the project but are missing from the list without opening each topic and visually inspecting it (spare me, please).

PG: "The last bit is OK, images don't get shown, the FPJ is for folders and topic files only."

You must be pulling my leg in some way. Some images are shown in the Project Manager, but not all. Is this the way it's supposed to work? It's not OK with me, if so. I know that .fpj files are for topics and folders. So there must be something fundamental that I am missing here.

Rant alert: It took me three solid weeks of work to figure out and solve most of the upgrade problems. Changes to styles did not stick, imported files and folders did not stick, list styles were totally messed up.... It was like the .fpj and .css files were read-only (they were not). This is why I did not upgrade a long time ago. RH5 did the job I needed, my translation team could not afford the upgrade price, the loss of time working on the project was not worth the few "enhancements" RH6/7/8 provided, and workflow issues that I considered to be bugs were not addressed at all. I tried the evaluation for each upgrade and found that converting my project did not happen smoothly. I took one look at the result and abandoned the idea. Then our office was burgled and my install disks were taken. I could not reinstall RH5 when I got a new computer, so I was forced into RH8 against my will.

[Peter Grainge]

What I meant was the FPJ file does not list the images and that does not affect them showing in Project Manager.

I just looked at your screenshot again and it looks like the images are in a folder

Image\Topic_Illustrations\

Toggle the view in Project Manager so that instead of showing HTML Files it shows Project Files.

Highlight Project Files and create a folder called Image

Highlight that and create a folder called Topic_Illustrations.

I suspect that will then list all the images that are in the folder in Windows Explorer.

If it does, that solves your problem of missing images. However, it leaves the fact that your FPJ files are not showing any folders or files and I would be very uneasy about working on a project in that state. Your call but I think it is inviting more trouble. I'm very surprised to learn RH is working like that. I would like to see a screenshot of root.fpj's content and one other fpj.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

The problem is that now I can't get back to this place. Since I manually update the .fpj files in this project, they have been acting fine.

However, in "the interest of science," I went back to my RH5 project, made a new copy, and upgraded this to RH8. THIS TIME I ran the Update DHTML effects before touching anything else and now all is well with that copy..... Last time, I did not know about this tool until I had been working on the project for a while. Perhaps trying to run this after things had gone awry made a difference. The need to do this was not set forth as part of the conversion process. I learned about it from this forum too late.

I think all is well, now. Thanks for your patient help.

~M

[Margaret_Becker]

The Update DHTML Effects tool seems to have had a serious impact on this project and should have been run first thing.

[Peter Grainge]

I have not seen anyone else have a problem running it at any point and I have used it on a lot of projects.

Have you got your images back in Project Manager following my suggestion.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

Yes. Your suggestion did work for the images. Thanks.

The best I can say is that if I try to add a new folder to the converted project before running the DHTML fixer, RH8 crashes. If I run the fixer and then add a folder, all is well. This was as much as I had time to test for right now.

[Peter Grainge]

OK so while it has been painful for you and there are unanswered questions, you now have a working project.

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@petergrainge

[Peter Grainge]

Just rereading your post, you are not still having to run Update DHTML before adding any folder are you?

If you are, then something is still fundamentally flawed.

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@petergrainge

[Margaret_Becker]

No, no, sorry, that was just for the re-updated project and only the one time. But I still think that running the DHTML update after the project was well underway caused a problem. As I said, when I tried to add a folder after updating the project to RH8, but BEFORE running DHTML update caused RH8 to crash or hang so long that it seemed like a crash. I remember this happening many times during the first stages of my upgrade process. Crashing a bunch of times can't be good for a project.