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RoboHelp HTML 9 frequently crashes

Guest
Mar 14, 2011 Mar 14, 2011

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Hi,

I'm using the latest version of RoboHelp 9. While doing the most rudimentary tasks in my project, like formatting text using the Design window and editing HTML code, RoboHelp will either hang or crash unexpectedly. This is happening at least five times a day recently. Many of the pages incidentally contain Word HTML tags and other junk code from Word that I remove manually--don't know if that has to do with the crashing. I can't figure out what's going on.

My computer's specs are the following:

Pentium Dual-Core CPU 2.5 GHz

4GB installed memory

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Deleted User
Mar 22, 2011 Mar 22, 2011

Chrissy_1234 wrote:

The problem is deleting the MS Word 2007 style tags. I don't know if Word 2000 tags and 2007 tags are the same, I believe they aren't. So I cannot delete the following types of text automatically using TidyHTML:

[Examples snipped]

I took the liberty of looking a little deeper into this for you. As others here have suggested, saving the files from M$Word as "filtered" HTML might help you get past your problem. I know you don't have access to the original M$Word documents, but tha

...

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Community Expert ,
Mar 14, 2011 Mar 14, 2011

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Try simply deleting the CPD file so that RoboHelp creates a new when you open the project.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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Guest
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Hi, Peter,

I deleted the file as you suggested, but it did not solve the problem. At the time I was editing a topic -- a "basic" HTML page riddled with Word HTML and other erroneous Word code. While simply deleting all that nonsensical and irrelevant code, RoboHelp crashed -- this has become a normal thing. And I don't want to find my project corrupted one day because of these crashes. 

I don't know if Adobe support is monitoring these forums, but can't anyone there simply replicate what I'm doing and see if they get the same results using my computer specs? The HTML files created in Word incidentally may or may not be saved using that "filtered" option by the way, it doesn't matter, RoboHelp will crash either way. Perhaps it's an application conflict with 64-bit Windows 7?

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Engaged ,
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Did you imported these Word files to generate the topics, and the HTML code cleaning you are talking about should be done very cautiaosly because if the backend HTML of the topic is incorrect then topic parsing can also cause the crashers.

As we see that the file missing symbols are showing up so the deletion of .cpd file will not help as the .fpj is also incorrect itself.

Can you please zip and share on the physical folders (HTML files with other resourses and .fpj file) @ ashishchandra.gupta@gmail.com then, If there are some particular topics which crash RoboHelp with higher probabitity then do share it

Ashish

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Guest
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Hi Ashish,

The HTML files that had been created in Word were imported into the project as HTML files; they were not imported as .doc files that were converted to XHTML by RoboHelp. I have been very careful cleaning the code, though.

Unfortunately I cannot send any of the project files to you because the information contained in the project is considered confidential information by the company I work for.

Thanks,

Chris

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Explorer ,
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Hi Chris,

Instead of importing the HTML files created from the Word, Import the word document directly in RoboHelp. The Import in Robohelp will automatically clean up the extra code. Hope this will resolve your problem.

Thanks,

Mona

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Guest
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Hi Mona,

Unfortunately, that's not possible as I do not have access to the original .doc files, only the HTML files created by others have been made available to me. I have to work with what I already have.

Thanks,

Chris

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Explorer ,
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Hi Chris,

If you can't send the HTML Files. Can you please do the following:-

1. Replace your Confidential content with some Dummy Content in the HTML File

2. Import that HTML file in Robohelp

3. Try Editing this in Robohelp

If Robohelp still crashes, please send me the HTML file at monagirdhar@gmail.com . I think that the issue is coming because of some HTML structure.

Thanks,

Mona

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Advisor ,
Mar 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011

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Chris, unfortunately, HTML conversion as practiced by Microsoft is a train wreck. We were struggling with a series of "HTML" files that had been "converted" from XLS spreadsheets. When instructed to generate WebHelp output from these files, RoboHelp gagged and sputtered for long periods of time, coughed up a few hairballs, and eventually (reluctantly) produced our output. It was touch-and-go, at times. Part of the problem is that MS has produced, in its "conversion," what it feels is needed: an output file for web viewing. RoboHelp, on the other hand, expects files similar to its own source files, which it then prepares for output. When it encounters some foreign, already-prepared-output code, well, there's the rub!

We "solved" our problem by renaming those XLS-to-HTML files to .html instead of .htm, and adding them to Baggage Files. This structure allowed RoboHelp to simply pass them along, ungenerated, to the output. Since we were not using the default RoboHelp search (using Zoom), we were still able to include these files in search.

Since you're presented with less options, I might suggest the nuclear option: that is, do your own filtering of this MS mish-mash by "cleansing" the content through a pure text editor such as Notepad.

  1. Open the Word "HTML" file, Select All, Copy.
  2. Open Notepad, Paste.
  3. In Notepad, Select All, Copy.
  4. Open the RH topic (new or existing) in Design View, empty any content, and Paste from Notepad.
  5. In the RH topic, set your formatting, styling, links, etc.

If these files are continuously updated and dumped on you for inclusion, you might want to get a good Compare utility (I use ExamDiff Pro) to identify only the changes, which you then manually add to your topics (without ever allowing them anywhere near your project!).

Try it with a few problematic files, as a test. It might sound like a lot of work, but that initial "cleansing" is a one-off effort, and updates would be a breeze (or a treat, as some say).

Good luck,

Leon

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Guest
Mar 16, 2011 Mar 16, 2011

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Hi Leon,

Your suggestion did not do anything except copy and paste the code from one application to another unchanged.

It seems there is no other solution other than going into the HTML code and deleting the junk that Word left in there. I found that some tags and attributes, especially the Span and the SpellE, GramE and so forth can be removed in the Design editor using the right click, Remove Attributes option, but still it's not an elegant solution. Or else the junk can be removed by using the Replace option in the HTML editor. But all the Word style attributes and junk at the top of the code has to be removed by hand it seems. And as a result of selecting and deleting that stuff, RoboHelp crashes, which is the problem I have.

Adobe developers should figure out a way to implement a "Clean HTML" feature to delete residual junk from files created in Word or any other word processor for that matter saved as HTML, or else figure out a way where the program doesn't crash when people do it themselves. I have tried such cleaning apps available online but none really get the job done.

Anyway, thanks.

Chris

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LEGEND ,
Mar 16, 2011 Mar 16, 2011

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Hi,

When you create a web page from Word, be sure to choose to save as "HTML, filtered". This will result in a much cleaner (though still polluted) file. If you choose the regular HTML, Word crams the page with Word code.

For cleaning word HTML, try searching google for "clean Word html" and that will give you some nice hits for cleaning the word html. Also, Dreamweaver CS5 has a utility to clean up Word generated HTML. Last but not least, you could also write a script in RoboHelp to clean the code of a html document and import it into the project. The easiest way out may be to simply import the Word document itself in RoboHelp.

Greet,

Willam

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Explorer ,
Mar 16, 2011 Mar 16, 2011

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Hi Chris,

If you can't send the HTML Files. Can you please do the following:-

1. Replace your Confidential content with some Dummy Content in the HTML File

2. Import that HTML file in Robohelp

3. Try Editing this in Robohelp

If Robohelp still crashes, please send me the HTML file at monagirdhar@gmail.com . I think that the issue is coming because of some HTML structure.

Thanks,

Mona

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Advisor ,
Mar 16, 2011 Mar 16, 2011

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In step 1, you did open the Word "HTML" file in a browser, didn't you?

If so, I can't understand how any underlying code could have been transferred between steps 1 and 2.

Leon

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Guest
Mar 17, 2011 Mar 17, 2011

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This sounds like a job for HTML Tidy (http://tidy.sourceforge.net). Tidy is a command-line program, so you need to be comfortable with launching a program from a command window, but not only is it designed to clean invalid content, it has a specific option to clean M$ Word files (--word-2000 yes).

RoboHelp actually uses Tidy when you select "W3C Compliance" from the "File" menu (libtidy.dll is stored in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 8\RoboHTML). I haven't yet tried setting the environment variable to see if I can change RoboHelp's default Tidy configuration, but will do so when I get the chance, and report back.

If you have trouble figuring out how to use Tidy, check back and I will try to respond to any specific questions you may have.

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Guest
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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Does anyone know if there is a performance conflict with Windows 7 64-bit? RoboHelp is crashing now when I am editing simple HTML code. It crashed on me three times in two hours. Is anyone else in the world having these issues with RoboHelp 9 running on Windows 64-bit or is it just me?

Thanks.

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Community Expert ,
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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Chrissy

First it may help you re sending files to know that both RoboAsh and Mona are Adobe employees who are giving their time to support the forums.

Second, as A25... says, HTML Tidy is a good way of cleaning the Word "HTML". Do the topics contain meta tags describing the source document and the fact that it was created in Word? If they do, delete those tags. See Importing Word Docs on my site for more information about the process. It  hasn't been updated for 9 but the process is the same.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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Guest
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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Hi Peter,

I had been removing all the Microsoft-related meta tags and declarations at the top where they appeared. I used HTML Tidy before on the web site they have --- http://infohound.net/tidy/ -- copying and pasting the code there and it always reports zero errors. Again, I cannot import the original Word files because I don't have them, I'm simply working with the HTML files that were created in Word, and I can't send them to anyone to examine for reasons of confidentiality.

Thanks for your help,

Chris

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Community Expert ,
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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It would be nice to see a topic but I doubt that is the problem. However you say that is not possible.

I think it is something else and clearly so does RoboAsh, an Adobe employee. However you say that is not possible.

I really don't know what to suggest as we are in the situation where you car is broken but you will not let the mechanic see it.

I'm not meaning to sound awkward, just wanting to explain the difficulty of helping you as we would wish.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Guest
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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Look, it's not hard to recreate this problem. Nearly all of the files were saved without the filtered option. Some of them have lenghty tables. All of them have Word styles converted into HTML. If anyone has a .doc file that is more than five or so pages long--the longer the better--save it as an HTML file using Word 2007 or higher. Then import it into RoboHelp. If RoboHelp doesn't crash as you edit the code and delete all the junk, then perhaps there is something wrong with my files, but I doubt that because I finally managed to clean them all despite the frequent crashes, yet RoboHelp still crashes if I open the page and make other minor adjustments, like deleting tags I don't want.

I can't send any of the files, I am a technical writer working for a software company. If I could I would. They're not going to like that I send confidential files to anyone. So if the mechanic can't help, then that's fine. I will keep putting up with the crashes.

Thanks,

Chris

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Community Expert ,
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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Chrissy

I did make it clear that I understood your situation. The difficulty here is that others are not reporting this problem so either it is your documents or your project. Without access to those it simply isn't possible to help and I think from the number of replies it is clear people do want to help.

If you cannot send the files or the project even to Adobe, then it does become difficult to help. I can understand not sending them to some unknown person but sending them to Adobe is surely different? Can you not get permission?

The only other thing I can suggest is that you create a new project and import one of the problem topics into that. Does the problem continue?


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Guest
Mar 18, 2011 Mar 18, 2011

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I've had similar problems with RoboHelp 8 -- usually when I edit the HTML by hand and create a not-well-formed file. If you're editing HTML by hand you must remember to promptly remove the correct end tag when you remove a start tag.  RoboHelp is not very good at coping with errors in HTML files, so I would do this in an editor other than RoboHelp, and re-validate the well-formedness of the file before opening it again in RoboHelp. Try installing Microsoft's Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, which is free with registration.

Just checking the validity of the MSHTM files with Tidy is not good enough; you need to actually use it to strip the MS cruft. I suggest you go to tidy.sourceforge.net and actually download the program so you can run it yourself.

Once you have it, open a command prompt and navigate to the folder where the MS files are stored. Then you can execute Tidy something like this:

"c:\program files\tidy.exe" --word-2000 yes -o [name of the output file]  [name of the input file]


The --word-2000 options tells Tidy to strip all the Word cruft; the -o option says to use the following file name as the output file (if you don't specify an output file Tidy writes the output to "Standard out" -- usually the screen, but it can be redirected if need be). Then, import the tidied file that was created into RoboHelp, not the Word file. I'm not sure that this will solve your problem but I think there is a good chance it will, and at the very least you will end up with much cleaner files to work with.

If you start using a lot of Tidy options its useful to collect them into a single configuration file, both to reduce the need for typing and to ensure correctness. The configuration file is passed to Tidy on the command line using the -config option. In this case your command line would look something like:

"c:\program files\tidy.exe" -config myconfig.cfg -o [name of the output file]  [name of the input file]

My own tidy configuration file, which I have placed in the root of my c: drive where I can always find it, is as follows:

break-before-br: y
drop-font-tags: y
clean: n
force-output: y
indent: y
indent-spaces: 2
numeric-entities: y
output-xhtml: y
output-encoding: ascii
input-encoding: win1252
tidy-mark: n
replace-color: y
merge-divs: n
merge-spans: n
wrap: 85

I have created a simple batch file to tidy a file and create an output file having yet another .html extension. It is as follows:

"%ProgramFiles%\tidy.exe" -config c:\tidy.cfg -o %1.html %1
pause

I then associated this batch file with the ".htm" and ".html" extension in the Windows file explorer (Tools->Folder Options->File Types->Advanced) as a new Action named "Tidy". Now when I right-click on a file I can select "Tidy" and I will end up with a new, tidied file. If you were to do this same thing, I would use ".htm" instead of ".html" as the added output extension, as I find that RoboHelp likes to use that extension better.

Should you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask.

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Guest
Mar 21, 2011 Mar 21, 2011

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Hi, A25... I will try that out. Thanks a lot for your help. That will most likely work.

Regards,

Chris

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Guest
Mar 21, 2011 Mar 21, 2011

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The problem is deleting the MS Word 2007 style tags. I don't know if Word 2000 tags and 2007 tags are the same, I believe they aren't. So I cannot delete the following types of text automatically using TidyHTML:

   <w:WrapTextWithPunct/>

   <w:UseAsianBreakRules/>

   <w:DontGrowAutofit/>

   <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>

   <w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>

   <w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>

   <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>

   <w:Word11KerningPairs/>

   <w:CachedColBalance/>

  </w:Compatibility>

...

which continues seemingly forever, then:

<style>

<!--

/* Font Definitions */

@font-face

    {font-family:"Cambria Math";

    panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}

/* Style Definitions */

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal

    {margin:0in;

    margin-bottom:.0001pt;

    font-size:12.0pt;

    font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

a:link, span.MsoHyperlink

    {color:blue;

    text-decoration:underline;}

a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed

    {color:purple;

    text-decoration:underline;}

.MsoChpDefault

    {font-size:10.0pt;}

@page Section1

    {size:8.5in 11.0in;

    margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;}

div.Section1

    {page:Section1;}

-->

</style>

and this:

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.0in;text-indent:-1.0in'>

and this:

<span class=SpellE><span class=GramE>

This is the junk I've been talking about, and TidyHTML will not get rid of it. I tried the TidyHTML web site, I tried the Tidy command line tool and other Tidy tools available with a GUI. It does not strip out this junk. And when I try to do it in RoboHelp, it crashes. I don't know what else I can write to better explain what I mean.

Thanks,

Chris

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Community Expert ,
Mar 21, 2011 Mar 21, 2011

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At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, can you not change the content of a document so that the junk remains and I can try to find a solution?


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Guest
Mar 21, 2011 Mar 21, 2011

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Of course. Thank you.

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