Options to improve chm compression?

[Jared Hess]

Alright, some background: Our largest RH project when compiled into the chm (compiled html help) output is approx 46 mb huge with 2482 topics and thousands of images. It was originally a Doc-to-Help project that was converted into RH when we switched back in 2004, so most of the images are in gif. But since 2004, we started adding new images as jpg files. Some bmps and pngs have sneaked in as well (141 bmps, 665 jpg, 2864 gif, and 4 png). 

I'm getting some push back from our systems people to see if we can drop the file size for our chm, because supporting 17 languages + the other smaller helps we distribute is making things bloated/unweildy I guess.

My bmps have the largest file size. I tried converting those to jpg files and rebuilt the help today, but it didn't seem to help much--in fact the file size increased slightly. This makes me think The compression for bmps seems to be pretty darn good.

What's the best image format to use for optimal compression/clarity?

Also, are there other ways/things to do to improve the chm compression? Or is this just a factor of too many images/topcis?

[Peter Grainge]

I believe BMPs are automatically converted to JPGs when you generate a CHM. You could reverse engineer a CHM to check (how is on my site).

It is more likely the number of topics and images that is the issue.

Do you have to install the CHMs for all languages? Can that not be an install preference, if it is not already one?

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Jared Hess]

Thanks for the response Rick.

Yes we do have to provide a distribution with all our supported languages. There are customers that need to switch between languages on the same computer.

I think our goal at this point is to try to simplify the help and cut the # of images used.

[Captiv8r]

LOL, I think you meant Peter.

[Jared Hess]

Sorry... I meant "Peter". (I had "Rick" on the brain from chatting with him at work. )