Robohelp webhelp needs to mesh with other help system

[luviola10]

My client wants my Robohelp webhelp to sync up with another help system. As of now, it's not working. Basically they want to link the other help system with my Robohelp.

The problem is that the ARIS Help dialog is using one of the legacy browser control to display the html help pages. Any html that uses the latest HTML tags supported by modern browser throws the control off and the text looks corrupted inside the control. We believe that RoboHelp generated pages contain those tags and this is why there is a problem displaying them.

Are there configuration options in RoboHelp that we can adjust to force a “compatible” html generation that will be suitable for the ARIS help browser control?

[Willam_van_Weelden]

I'm not familiar with ARIS, but can you please specify what version of RH you are using?

Also, what is "compatible" html? RH7 uses HTML 4.01F and RH8 uses XHML 1.0 Transitional. Both have been around for quite some time. If your control doesn't support this, I say it's time to update the control. Even microsoft is trying to make a good browser

Serious, what tags are giving problems? Does your output files have the xml declaration? Can your conroll process UTF-8 encoded files?

Greet,

Willam

[luviola10]

Hi William,

yes, ARIS is a standard business process modeling application.

using Robohelp 8.02 WebHelp.

Thank you for your comments.

Gloria

[luviola10]

William, when you ask if the output files have the xml declaration, can you

explain further? I generated and published the project with WebHelp; I do

see xml files in the list of files, but should they located somewhere

specific in the list? Also, what do you mean by "Can your conroll process

UTF-8 encoded files?" Do you mean control not conroll?

Thanks,

Gloria

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

The XML declaration is the text <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> in the top of the file (Topics and other files). There have been posts about the XML declaration giving problems. There is a workaround for this: Go to Tools > Options > General and check "Convert RoboHelp edited topics to HTML". Create a new output and see if this fixes your problem. The XML files you see are used to power specific functions, ignore them.

"conroll" is a typo. Can your control process UTF-8 encoded files? RH8 WebHelp output is UTF-8 encoded and uses the Byte Order Mark. Let your developers check if the control supports this.

Greet,

Willam

[luviola10]

William,

thank you, you've been a great help!

I'll let you know the resolution...Gloria

[luviola10]

Hi William,

I've checked the box "convert RoboHelp edited topics to HTML", generated and

republished. I've printed out the output files, compared them to the

previous published version (where the XML was in the first line of every

topic). There is no difference in the published output! The SSL files have

XML, not HTML at the end. Can you help? Gloria

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

Have you cleared your ouput folder before creating the webhelp? That might help.

Open a couple of your topics in notepad. They should start with "<html", not with "<? xml".

Which XML files are you talking about. There are some in whxdata, but you can ignore them. Your topics should be names <mytopic>.htm.

Greet,

Willam