RoboHelp wants .css and .htt files to be writable

[Guest]

RoboHelp 8.0.2 on Windows 7, 32-bit; producing WebHelp

Moved from XP Professional to a new PC running Windows 7, 32-bit, at the beginning of the month (this month - October, 2010).

When I double-click on a topic in the Program Files to edit it, an error message appears: "To execute the selected action, the files in the list below need to be writable." The list of files contains the related .htt (template/Master Page) and .css (style sheet) for the topic, if those files are set to Read-Only in Windows Explorer.

The dialog box title is Confirm Access, and the buttons are OK and Cancel. Clicking OK makes the listed files editable. Clicking Cancel doesn't.

1. First, as a writer, I don't like the message. If the software is going to change files, it should ask permission with a question mark and a set of Yes/No buttons. Just saying.

2. More importantly, I don't want my .htt and .css files to be editable while I am working in the RH interface. It is very easy to change a style without meaning to, and those files are the safeguard of the consistent look between all authors' help projects.

3. This was not a problem in my previous installation of RH8 on Windows XP. I always worked with my .css and htt files locked down, and never saw this message before.

Has anyone else seen this? Did I somehow change the RH8 settings to require editable style sheets and templates?

Elisa

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Elisa.

You can set the properties of any file to Read Only in Windows Explorer to do what you want. When, and only when, changes are made to those file inside RoboHelp will you get the "this needs to be writable" message.

---

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Guest]

Yes, but this is my issue - I don't want RoboHelp to change the .htt or .css files. It never asked to do so before (unless I did something stupid, like click "Update style to match entry").

Why would RH suddenly want to make these files writable at the time I open a topic for editing?

[Guest]

Well, I don't have an answer, but I do have a fix. Thank you, Gravenstein!

Menu bar: Tools > Options > Associations

The default HTML Editor was set to Design View, but the Auto-Select Editor radio button was selected. Changing Auto-Select to Use Default Editor fixed two problems:

1. The Access Confirmation message for writable .htt and .css files stopped showing up.

2. Double-clicking on topics or using the Edit button/command to open them in Design View started working again. (I didn't mention this issue before...thought it was a separate problem.)

Near as we can figure, somewhere on my Windows 7 PC, there was another file association that conflicted with the RH association for HTML files. Making the association explicit via Use Default Editor fixed the conflict.

Another writer had the Edit issue (although not the .htt/.css writable requirement), and she fixed it by stopping SnagIt from running in the background. We suspect a similar root cause - file association conflict of some kind - though we have no idea why SnagIt has anything to do with HTML files.

This is probably a one-off problem, but we've had a lot of those, and reading other folks' posts about their one-off problem helped us narrow down the search. So here's our solution, FWIW.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Likely back in good old XP you had long ago configured the default editor you spoke of. Then as time passed you forgot you had done this.

Making the change is a one off unless you decide to reinstall or something.

There are a number of configuration changes I regularly recommend when I facilitate a class. Configuring the editor is one of those. It would be nice if RoboHelp just came pre-configured with all the recommended settings, but it doesn't. The good news is that it gives me something to talk about during class facilitation!

Cheers... Rick

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