Lost Source Files

[r_o_n_e]

I have to update an HTML help project that was originally generated using RoboHelp 9.1 several years ago. Unfortunately, the help source files have since been lost. I uncompiled about 100 HTML files from the application's chm file and imported them into a new help project. What functionality, if any, cannot be recovered in this way? What is the best way to proceed and are there any issues to look out for since I do not have the original source?

An additional irritation is that the built in RoboHelp HTML X5 (5.01) help function does not come up using the "Help | Contents & Index" or "Help | On Compilation View F1" menubar menus. The menu and title bars dim, but the help function is not invoked. All other help menu items appear to work as expected. Any ideas?

Thanks, Ron

[RoboWizard]

Hi Ron

For the RoboHelp Help, try clicking Tools > Options > General tab and selecting "Use offline help".

Cheers... Rick

[RoboWizard]

Hi again

Sorry, I forgot to add a couple of things.

1. Forgot to say, welcome to our community!
2. Fellow Adobe Community Expert Peter Grainge has some info you may find useful. You can see it by clicking this link.

Cheers... Rick

[r_o_n_e]

Rick:

Thanks for the link to the grainge.org web site. Looks like there is lots to learn!

Regards, Ron

[r_o_n_e]

I was able to successfully decompile the chm file using both HTML Help Studio and the Keytools decompile function. Using Grainge's reverse engineering procedure, I was able to also recover the table of contents and the index. I understand that the context sensitive map cannot be recovered from the chm. The reverse engineering procedure does not include reconstruction of the glossary or browse sequences. Can they also be recovered?

Thanks, Ron

[Captiv8r]

Hi again Ron

I'm not sure what method you actually used to extract your files, so I'll go with a method I'm familiar with.

If you have RoboHelp installed on a PC, a nifty thing is installed on the context menu that displays when you right click a .CHM file inside Windows Explorer. You should see an option labeled "Convert to source". Click that and you should see something called the HTML Help Studio. If you look at the files that appear inside the left pane of this application, you should see a file bearing the extension of .GLO. This is the file containing the Glossary entries. So that should help you get the Glossary back.

The same pretty much applies with the browse sequences. But the extension here is .BRS.

I'm not sure I'd totally give up on your map files. When I look at this tool, if I expand the top level item (aptly named "Top Level") I see something labeled "#IVB". If you click this item, you see something that sure looks an awful lot like map ids in the window on the right. You could click the window on the right, press Ctrl+A to select all, then Ctrl+C to copy to the Windows Clipboard. Then paste the whole shebang into a new fresh instance of Notepad. I'm not sure if you can get away with this, but you can try saving that Notepad file as the desired ".h" file and who knows? Maybe it will work? If it doesn't work outright, maybe it will at least give you something to use as a template or guide to rebuild the .h.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

Rick emailed me offline about the context sensitive help and I revised the instructions for that. In doing so I made the same discovery Rick describes about the browse sequences and glossary so I went back to the whole area and retested the methods. They have now been rewritten so that you will not lose them.

[r_o_n_e]

Thank you RoboWizard. The RoboHelp HTML help function now starts up fine.

Regards, Ron