External Link not working in Linux

[Guest]

Hi,
I produce a large online help system in Webhelp format, which is used on various operating systems. There are a couple of other Webhelp systems delivered alongside the main help which are for sister products.

Up until now, I've been Creating a couple of extra entries in the TOC which link to the external help systems.
I haven't linked directly from a TOC book, but from a dummy TOC page beneath a TOC book. The page links directly to the sister help and launches the front page in a new window. Great...except I've been told that customers using Linux get a "File Not Found" error.

I specified a link like the following, which works just fine on Windows:
../sisterhelp/index.html

Any ideas why this might be happening? I need to resolve it pretty quickly.
Robohelp does seem to be automatically changing the forward slashes to backslashes, so I hope that's not the reason!

Any help very gratefully received, as I need to make a frustrated customer happy again!
Thanks!
Feebeegeebee

[Peter Grainge]

Could it be a case issue?

[Guest]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for responding.
I don't think so. Filenames and links are all lowercase.

The message they get is along the following lines:

"File not found Firefox can't find the file at /team/install/product/help/main/..\sisterhelp\index.html."

That would appear to confirm that the forward slashes in the link are being converted to backslashes within Robohelp.
Any idea why or how I can stop this?
Thanks again.
Regards,
Feebeegeebee

[Peter Grainge]

This appears to be a concatenated link with the ..\sisterhelp\index.html coming from your topic and the rest from somewhere else. Can you tell us more about that?

[Guest]

Well, I'll try.
When you click on the TOC entry in Windows, it goes straight to the sister help, launches the startpage in a new window, etc. For example:
file:///C:/product/version/install/help/sisterhelp/index.html

In Linux, the link seems to be trying to do something like:
/product/version/install/help/main/..\sisterhelp\index.html."

Note: I had wondered whether they'd moved the files to a different directory structure and still expected the links to work(!), but I got a member of our test team to test a brand new installation and they confirmed that the link is definitely broken on Linux.

There are other links within the main help that are formatted in the same way. However, they are linked from hyperlinks within the text to individual pages in the sisterhelp. These work fine and Robohelp doesn't change the forward slashes to backslashes.
For example
../ ../sisterhelp/index.html#installation.html

But, when I use the same kind of links from a TOC page forward slashes are changed to backslashes.
Could it be a bug by any chance?
Thanks for your help so far.
Feebeegeebee

[MergeThis]

Sounds like a job for CAPTAIN REDIRECT!

Create a new topic (call it sisterhelp1_gopage, for example), strip all text in WYSIWYG

[MergeThis]

Sounds like a job for CAPTAIN REDIRECT!

Create a new topic (call it sisterhelp1_gopage, for example), strip all text in WYSIWYG

[MergeThis]

Sounds like a job for CAPTAIN REDIRECT!

Create a new topic (call it sisterhelp1_gopage, for example), strip all text in WYSIWYG

[MergeThis]

Yikes! I think that was an electrical jolt!

Anyway, as I was saying before being rudely interrupted...

Create the redirect topic, make it blank, and in TrueCode, add the included line inside the HEAD section along with all the other META tags. See if that works.


Good luck,
Leon

[Guest]

Thanks a lot Leon!
I will go away and try that and then confirm whether or not it worked. Fingers crossed, eh?
I would never have been able to come up with that solution!
Regards,
Feebeegeebee.
(now able to smile again...)

[Guest]

Just one more thing...sorry!
How do I get that redirect to launch in a new browser window?
Thanks a lot,
Feebeegeebee

[Captiv8r]

LOL! Not only did you get jolted. But in all that flailing around you did, you pressed the "Post" button three times!

Happy Friday all... Rick

[MergeThis]

Actually, Rick, the ColdFusion Fairy is responsible for the triple post. All I did was to get blown out of my Reply window back to the main Webhelp post area. Granted, I might have been flailing, but that achieved no results. :-)

Sigh...

[HKabaker]

Are you using RH to insert the TOC lines in the parent help?

I sometimes see that RH inserts a backslash (in the project TOC view, create or edit properties for a TOC item) if it can't find the target within the project. You might be able to correct that to a forward slash manually in the TOC properties dialog.

Using a redirect page in the parent project makes the TOC wizard feel better.

Another approach is to make the intermediary a baggage file. RH will link a TOC item to a baggage file OK, because the target is within the WebHelp root directory.

Harvey

[Guest]

Hi Harvey,
Yes, I'm using RH to insert the TOC lines in the parent help.
It's just a "TOC page" with a title and a link to the sister help.
Despite entering forward slashes, it saves them as back slashes.
The relocate page suggested seems to work, although I need it to launch in a new window and haven't been able to get that to happen, so any hints on that gratefully received!
Hadn't thought of a baggage file. Might give that a try next!
Thanks for your comments!
Regards,
Feebeegeebee

[Guest]

Thank you all for helping me with this.

I have ended up doing the following:

- Created a redirect topic, by creating a blank topic, deleting all text in that topic, and adding in the line kindly suggested by Leon (above) in the TrueCode, within the HEAD section along with all the other META tags.
e.g. <meta http-equiv=refresh content="0;URL=../sisterhelp/index.html">

- Within the Baggage Files area selected New Baggage File... and specified my new redirect topic as a baggage file.

- Created a new TOC Page that points to this baggage file. Within the TOC Page Properties I could then select Frame: New Window, to ensure the sister help launches in a brand new browser window.

I need to get our tester to try it out on Linux, but it looks seamless on Windows and the links are in the correct format now, so it should work just fine.

Thanks a lot guys!

Feebeegeebee