Robohelp 9: WebHelp search showing too many highlighted results

[ginafromtampa]

I set up the WebHelp Settings (Search) to Enable Highlighting in Search Results, Show Context in Search Results, and Hide Rank Column in Search Results.  When I search for keywords, such as "e-mailing requestors", the results highlight every letter in the search phrase, including the "e" in "the.  I did not enable the Substring Search.  Please see the attached screenshot.  Does anyone know what's wrong?

I have the latest update of RoboHelp 9 (9.0.0.228).  This is happening in IE9 (9.0.8112.16421) and Firefox 3.6.20.  (I can't even test the WebHelp locally in Google Chrome until I upload it to the Web server, since all of the panes are blank (version 13.0.782.112 m).

[Peter Grainge]

The search is seeing that as e mailing requestors - three words and returning results accordingly. Sub string search is where you search on say "car" and it will return "scart".

WebHelp searches on any word you input.

There's an article on my site about ZoomSearch that enables you to be more precise.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ginafromtampa]

Peter,

Thanks for responding so quickly.

I just checked the search and anytime you enter a word with a hyphen you get these results.  For example, entering our product name Track-It! returns results with the words before and after the hyphen (in this case, "it" as in "it", "item", "with", "without", "criteria", etc. It seems to be doing a sub string search even though I didn't enable that setting.  I'll just add to the WebHelp what will happen if you use a hyphen.

Thanks.

Gina

[Captiv8r]

Hi Gina

Hopefully Peter won't mind my adding an observation here. You seem to be believing that a substring search is being performed. But what it looks like to me is quite simply that RoboHelp is ignoring the - between the words. A substring would return the following:

* fit would have it higlighted

* spit would have it highlighted

* Its would have it highlighted

Basically any word with "it" in the character string would be returned. And that doesn't appear to be what is happening here. Instead, it appears to be simply ignoring the hyphen and considering "it" to be a word of its own.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Peter Grainge]

I'm confused now. Gina is saying that IT is finding WITH and suchlike and you are explaining that is how sub-string searching works but Gina has not enabled sub-string searching. Surely the search should only return IT as a word without sub-string searching.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ginafromtampa]

Right - it's still behaving like a sub string search by highlighting "with" when the search is for "track-it" or "track-it!" (the exclamation mark is part of our product name).  In another example, the search term non-network highlights network like a sub string (as in networking), but does not find pages with non.  So does the hyphen mean "or"?  RoboHelp 7 didn't behave this way when searching for "e-mail".  The only way I can get good search results is to enter "e-mail" and requestor instead of e-mail and requestor so that ever single "e" in a word doesn't get highlighted.

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

You may well work it all out but I doubt you expect your users to do the same. Please mark ZoomSearch as the answer.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ginafromtampa]

Peter,

ZoomSearch looks like a plugin and not part of Robohelp so I don't want to mark it as an answer.  I except RoboHelp 9 to work like it did with RoboHelp 7 without this problem.

Thanks.

[Peter Grainge]

I wasn't serious, hence the smiley.

What I was really getting at is that ZoomSearch is a way to configure how the search works and whilst there is some setup, thereafter it is straightforward so you would have a quick solution. Of course RoboHelp should be working as you are expecting and I will take another look at the search rules. Meantime it might be worth setting up a new project with just a couple topics that contain the right words to test the help. It's often worth testing things in a clean project.

I understand your frustration and the link to report a bug is below.

http://www.Adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=38

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ginafromtampa]

Peter,

No problem.  Thanks for the link to report the bug.  I just did.

Gina

[Peter Grainge]

I just did some quick testing and if you enclose the search in quotes you will get what you want. "e-mail" will find only e-mail and not email or the letter e and all instances of mail.

Basically without quotes each word is search on and punctuation will be ignored. Enclose the search in quotes and you will get what you want.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[ginafromtampa]

Peter,

You and Rick are both correct.

Here's the response from Nidhi at Adobe Support after I reported this as a bug:

"For searching words like 'e-mail' ,you need to specify it in double quotes ,and then only just the word 'e-mail' will be highlighted .
As in our search we have a set of break characters:-  @ $ ^ ( ) ~ ? / { } [ ] + = ! * - %.
Whenever we encounter such break characters in the search query ,text is broken into keywords at these characters and indexed for searching  ,and that is why in case of the word e-mail, the word 'e' and the word 'mail' are indexed separately .And when you search for the word e-mail without quotes ,it would search for all instances where it finds the word 'e' or the word 'mail' and highlight them .
Hence if you want the search to return and highlight only the word 'e-mail', you need to specify the word 'e-mail' in quotes like "e-mail" so that it honors it as a phrase and phrase search is done on it and the exact match is returned and highlighted."

Thanks very much for your help.

[RoboColum_n_]

Just for the record for anyone in future coming up against this thread and using WebHelp Pro output on the RoboHelp Server, using double quotes does not work. At least with RoboHelp Server 8

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The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[Captiv8r]

Hi Gina

Thanks ever so much for that reply and taking the time to share with us.

I do believe it's the closest thing I ever recall seeing coming from Adobe to explain the search algorythms used in WebHelp!

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[johndaigle]

To clarify, RoboHelp Server 9 *does* include an enhancement that added "phrase search". This is a great feature and I'm glad it is available in regular WebHelp as well.

Thanks

John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor
Evergreen, Colorado
www.showmethedemo.com

[ginafromtampa]

Rick,

Thanks for replying.  Please see my comment under Peter's post (above).

Gina