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Welcome to our community
Unfortunately we have version control in the mix. That always complicates things more than it should because now you must ponder is the issue related to RoboHelp or is it related to Source Control?
Are you using VSS in the integrated mode where RoboHelp attempts to "help you out" by automagickally checking things in and out for you as you work? Or are you using it separately, where you perform your check in and check out as if VSS was a separate application?
My thought is that certain files that are needed in order to update the snippet management aren't becoming writable. This could be a bug with RoboHelp (if using in an integrated fashion) and it could be an error on your behalf (if using as a separate app).
If integrated, I'd suggest filing a Bug Report (link is in my sig).
If separate, make sure you check out ALL the files before working with RoboHelp and see if things improve.
Also, as a workaround for the integrated aspect, I'd try checking out ALL the files as well.
Cheers... Rick 
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OK, my colleague (who is a RH certified expert) figure out what was going on. Basically, in addition to our two hard drive copies of the project being out of sync (which we fixed by deleting some, taking some out of VSS that didn't belong, and recopying everything onto my hard drive) there is an underlying snippet problem which my colleague diagnosed as follows (her description):
- The project was worked on in RH7 for a couple of years. In early June 2011, RH9 was installed. The project was opened in RH9, and the appropriate ‘do you want to convert the project’ message displayed. I proceeded to do the conversion.
- Everything seemed to convert rather well except for one thing – the snippets. If you opened the Properties window for a snippet, you could see the description; however, the description would not display in the Pod in the designated “Description” column.
- As a test, I created a new snippet in RH9, which generated the following code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="topic-comment" content="here's the description" />
<title>New Snippet</title>
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 9" />
</head>
<body>
<p>This is placeholder text for your snippet. To add content to the body,
replace this text. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>For information about applying snippets to topics, press <b>F1</b>.</p>
</body>
</html>
However, the code for a converted snippet looks like this:
<!doctype HTML public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Frameset//EN">
<html><head>
<meta http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name=generator content="Adobe RoboHelp - www.adobe.com">
<meta name=generator-major-version content=0.1>
<meta name=generator-minor-version content=1>
<meta name=filetype content=RoboHelp>
<meta name=filetype-version content=1>
<meta name=page-count content=1>
<meta name=layout-height content=487>
<meta name=layout-width content=424>
<title>Use this snippet as the explanation for the Credit Type field on a form.</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Unit of credit for the course. Together with the Credit Value, it defines
the possible credit hours earned for the course.</p>
</body>
</html>
Notice how the text that is in the title tag is actually the DESCRIPTION for the snippet. Also, there is no meta tag for the real description in the converted code. The real title for this snippet is Credit Type, but for some reason, that does not display in the converted snippet code. The name only displays correctly in the Properties window, like this:
Strange how the name (or “Title” as the code seems to indicate it should be) correctly displays in the Properties window, but that name is nowhere in the actual code in the HTS file.
So it seems to me that there is a disconnect between what’s in the code, and what’s displaying in RH, and I’m not sure how or why that happened. I simply allowed RH9 to convert my RH7 project, and this Snippet problem was the only resulting problem that I’ve found.
Is there any way to get this properly fixed by Adobe? Even when we enter the appropriate descriptions ourselves, they STILL don’t display properly in the Snippets pod. Sometimes some of them display, sometimes all of them don’t display, and sometimes if you perform an action (like creating a new snippet), then that action will cause some or all of the descriptions to display.
Here’s an example --
1st screenshot below – the Snippets pod as it typically displays for us in RH9. Absolutely no descriptions displaying.
2nd screenshot below – I created a new snippet. The description for the new snippet displays PLUS the two descriptions for recently created snippets display! You can only see one of them in the screenshot (“Curriculum Considered Complete Situations”), but further down the list, the description for a snippet named “Requiring Search Criteria” also displays after creating the new snippet (Note: Both of these snippets were created in RH9, which raises the questions: Why didn’t the descriptions already display *before* I created a new snippet? Why did the action of creating a new snippet *cause* the two snippet descriptions to suddenly display?)
Another Note: After my co-worker had manually gone through all of the snippets and manually added descriptions (and updated the “Title” tags to reflect the actual title of each snippet), this caused some issues – erratic Snippet pod behavior, and he had to keep using the Task Manager to close RH (normal close methods wouldn’t work). So since RH9 started acting funny and wouldn’t close for him, we reverted back to using the HTS files and the rhsnippet.apj snippet file that RH9 originally converted for us, and those original files are what we are continuing to use, but we would like to have a solution for the problem. Why didn’t RH9 properly convert the HTS files? Or at least, to us, based on the code that’s actually in the files, they don’t appear to be properly converted.
Given that this is not a common problem and all the behind the scenes stuff that you have understandably had to try, I doubt Adobe would investigate this as a bug. Even if they did, who knows when a solution would be made available. There is no consultancy service offered by them so I think you are stuck with a home brewed fix.
Try this to see if it helps. Create a new project and don't put it anywhere near source control. Import some topics from the rogue project that include good and bad snippets. The import process will not bring in the snippet but the topics will still have the placeholders. Next import all the snippets referenced in those topics.
First see if the process of importing them fixed the missing description problem. I doubt it will. What I am hoping though is that you can now add descriptions that will stick.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
LaconicVerbosity
Just wondered how you were getting on with this problem.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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