4
Replies
Hi all
I saw the thread on HATT.
In the event folks may find this thread later and want to know what Rob actually suggested instead of knowing he fixed it, here is a copy/paste from Rob's reply on HATT. (Rob is a Microsoft Help MVP)
=====> Begin Copy/Paste <=====
Not as elementary as it seems. The CHM is a self-contained file system, much
like a ZIP file. When you use a relative path from a file inside the CHM, it
goes to another file inside the CHM, not to the actual file system. To do
what you want requires a bit of JavaScript. Luckily for you, everybody and
his brother wants to do this, so there's a Microsoft KB article on it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644690%28VS.85%29.aspx
To ensure that the PDF opens in a separate PDF reader rather than in the
browser, you'd want to write the URL to a Shortcut object rather than to a
link, something like the following:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function setPDFPath(fn, text)
{
var X, Y, sl, a, ra, link;
ra = /:/;
a = location.href.search(ra);
if (a == 2)
X = 14;
else
X = 7;
sl = "\\";
Y = location.href.lastIndexOf(sl) + 1;
link = 'file:///' + location.href.substring(X, Y);
// ACCOUNT FOR PATHS THAT GO UP IN THE TREE;
while( fn.indexOf('../') == 0 )
{
fn = fn.substring( 3, fn.length );
link = link.substring( 0,
link.lastIndexOf(sl, link.lastIndexOf(sl) - 1) + 1 );
}
link += fn;
document.getElementById( "pdflink"
).insertAdjacentHTML( 'afterBegin', '<object
classid="clsid:adb880a6-d8ff-11cf-9377-00aa003b7a11"
type="application/x-oleobject"><param name="Command" value="ShortCut"><param
name="Button" value="Text:' + text + '"><param name="Item1" value=",' + link
+ ',"></object>' );
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="setPDFPath('../docs/glyphref.pdf', 'Click to open the PDF');">
<p><span id="pdflink"></span></p>
</body>
</html>
For WebHelp, you might be stuck. I'm not sure there's a consistent and
reliable way to ensure that a PDF opens in a separate window if a user has a
PDF plug-in installed. You can try to force it to be treated as an
executable file by playing around with MIME types via the <a> element "type"
attribute, but I think those are often ignored.
********************
Rob Cavicchio
=====> End Copy/Paste <=====
Cheers... Rick 
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