RoboHelp 10: Where did my images and styles go?

[Lady_Jag]

I recently upgraded from RoboHelp HTML 7 to RoboHelp 10. I converted my .xpj project without any problem, and was able to generate my WebHelp files seamlessly....almost!

When I viewed the generated files, I noticed 3 outstanding issues:

1. The images in the topics do not appear in the generated files (although they appear on the RoboHelp Designer page.)

2. The bulleted items are now square, instead of round. (Again, they appear correctly on the RoboHelp Designer page.)

3. The paragraphs that are supposed to be in colored boxes (notes, tips, examples, etc.) no longer show any color, although the note icon assigned to these styles appear. (Here too, the colored boxes appear correctly on the RoboHelp Designer page.)

How do I get these items back?

[Peter Grainge]

Have you resolved these issues by now?

If Yes, please add what you did.

If No, post back.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

No. It's very strange. I can see the images in the RoboHelp UI, but not in the generated the Help file.

I'm wondering if RoboHelp 10 relies on some sort of "Images" folder that RoboHelp 7 did not use?

[Peter Grainge]

I will take a look at this tomorrow.

[Peter Grainge]

1] IMAGES

Do the images show in Project Manager?

Do the links in the HTML have an absolute or relative path?

2] LISTS

Common problem when upgrading to 8 or above for the first time. See Lists on my site.

3] BORDERS

Not sure about this one. Are we talking about tables where the borders are not appearing? Have you tried viewing in more than one browser?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

Thanks for checking!

1) I don't see any images in the Project Manager pod; they appear only on the Design page for the corresponding topic. All I see in the Project Manager pod are the standard folders (Project Files, Broken Links, URLs, ToC, Index, Glossary). I checked the folders, and see no images.

  The links in the HTML have a relative path: ".../Folder Name/image.jpg."

2) I am close to a solution on lists. Thanks!

3) They're not borders, per se, but more like background color for specific paragraphs. For example, I have a Note paragraph style, which inserts a note icon at the beginning of the paragraph, and a light green color behind the note paragraph text. The result gives the appearance of a light green "box" with the note text inside.

[Peter Grainge]

IMAGES

Toggle the view in Project Manager (first icon) so that the first folder reads Project Files rather than HTML Files. The icon will show a single small blueish circle (meant to be a globe) whereas in the HTML view it will show two circles.

Now look for the "Folder Name" folder whatever its real name. If it is not where it should be in the hierarchy, create the folder where it should be and the images should then appear.

Note there is a filter icon, make sure that is not excluding image file types.

Any of those things could prevent the images appearing in Project Manager but generally whatever appears in a topic appears in the output, even with those problems so I am not confident fixing the fact they are missing from PM will fix the output problem.

Let's get them appearing first and take it from there.

BORDERS

The problem there could be a style mapping issue or perhaps the styles were previously lists of a sort and as you now know, how lists now work has changed.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

By default, Project Manager is set to view Project Files, rather than HTML, so no worries there.

The filters are set to show everything, including images, so we're good there too.

I'm not sure what to do for the "Folder Name" folder procedure, though. I have several folders and sub-folders under Project Files that contain my various topics file...and the corresponding topic images, or so I thought. However, the only thing there now are the topic files?

[Peter Grainge]

The next step is to verify that the folder structure you see in Windows Explorer is exactly the same as you see in RoboHelp's Project Manager and that there is a mismatch beween what Windows Explorer shows for images and what RoboHelp shows.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

The folder structure is the same in both Project Manager and Explorer. However, the image files: .png, .jpg, .gif appear only in the Explorer folders; not in the project files.

Does this mean I need to somehow import all my images back into the corresponding folders in RoboHelp?

[Peter Grainge]

Maybe an old trick will work here. In RoboHelp Project Manager, rename one of the folders that has images that do not show. They may reappear. You can then revert to the old name.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

Bummer. Still no images.

[Peter Grainge]

One more trick before we start making offerings to the gods. In Rh select a folder that is not showing the images in it and create a new topic there. Save the topic. Use the insert image icon. Browse to the same folder, add one of the "missing" images and save. Does that make just that image show or do the whole lot come in?

If that doesn't work, hopefully you have a copy of the project still in Rh7 format. Create a copy and try upgrading again.

Let us know how that goes.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

Curiouser and curiouser!

When I try to insert the image into the new topic I created, I get the error, "Unable to rename the file, 'site_map.jpg'. The filename contains illegal characters." Illegal characters? Even when I select an image that has only alpha characters in the name I get the same message.

I do still have a copy of the project, but this will be my third or fourth time doing the RH10 upgrade on it.

[Peter Grainge]

One last thing, try adding a new image with a alpha only name into one of the folders using Windows Explorer. Then try to add that to your new topic.

If that fails, how big is the pre upgrade project if zipped up and can you share it privately?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

I got the same error message with the new alpha-only image.

The zipped project is HUGE: about 11 MB and about 2,000 topics. Also, I'm not sure I'm allowed to distribute it, as it is proprietary documentation for my company's entire software package.

However, I just discovered that my coworker is able to generate an earlier backup version (missing a few topics and topic modifications) of the files on his machine and the images appear in the output. Do you think if I overlayed his .xpj and images onto my machine it might work?

I want to avoid overlaying all the topics, as the ones on my machine are the most up-to-date, but I guess I'll do whatever is necessary to get a clean output.

[Peter Grainge]

That is something I would NOT do.

Does your co-worker see the images in Rh as well as in the outputs? If they do, open the same FPJ file in the same folder on both machines using Notepad. Does your co-workers file reference the images and yours does not? Do not make any changes and do not Save in Notepad. Just close them again for now.

Please tell me the project is on your local drive and that you and your co-worker have never tried to both work on it at the same time without source control.

11mb and 2000 topics may be large but it's not huge.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

I will take a look at the .fpj when my co-worker gets back in the morning. Thanks!

No worries on source control: The co-worker I was referring to is a developer who helps me with the frameset for our Help file;. He doesn't work on any of the content, so I keep all the topics on my local.

[Lady_Jag]

I compared the .fpj files line by line, and they are the same.

I took another close look at the .htm code for one of the generated topics that was missing images and discovered the problem: the image names were saved with underscores (_) and not spaces when I first added them in RH7, but now the <img src> call in the .htm file has a space instead of an underscore. So, for example, a call to the image, "site_map.jpg" is now "<a href="../../site map.jpg> in the html!

It's so weird! I looked at the exact same .htm files I generated 3 weeks ago with RH7, and the <img src> tag includes the image names WITH underscores! Not sure why or how that happened between upgrading to RH10, but I'm content to just go through all my images and replace any underscores in the file names with spaces.

As for the styles and paragraph colors, I'm still looking at the .css to see what can be done to make RH cooperate.

Thanks for all the Help with this, Peter!

EDIT: So here's another image mystery...In the main folder where I keep my images, the image names have spaces, not underscores. However, in the folder that contains the generated files, the image names have underscores. So somewhere in the generation of the Help file, RH is replacing the spaces in image name with underscores, but not adjusting the <img src> call in the html accordingly. Is that even possible? I'm sooo confused now!

Message was edited by: Lady_Jag

[Lady_Jag]

I think the Image feature is broken. Any time I try to add an image to a new or existing topic on the Design page (even if it is a newly saved image), I get the error, "Unable to rename the file, [file name]."

All my existing images appear in the Resource Manager pod, but not in the Project Folders area when I click [Insert Image]. If I try to drag an image from the Resource Manager into any topic, I get the same message as above.

I am out of ideas on how to get this $*%&# image thing to work.

[Peter Grainge]

Ah! In post 19 you tell us Resource Manager is involved.

In Resource Manager images can have spaces and it used to be the case that if your project was set to have underscores in file names, that did not apply to images.

Now the situation is different. If you insert an image with spaces in the name, Rh10 will save the image with the spaces. If however you amend that filename in any way, Rh will add underscores in the filename to replace spaces. However, it also changes the image filename in the topic so the link remains.

Somehow your project and resource manager seem to have got into a state of flux between spaces and underscores. I think it is trying to rename the file with underscores and cannot.

When I asked you to add an image before, were you doing so via Resource Manager?

Are the filenames in the FPJ file exactly the same as in the project? If one has spaces and the other has underscores, that could account for this situation.

Also have you tried generating to a new folder?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

I'm ashamed to admit I never even glanced at Resource Manager before the upgrade. (The error I get has a [Resource Manager] button, so I thought I'd give it a try.) All my images have been added by either right-clicking and selecting Insert Image, or by clicking on the Insert Image icon. Still, I think you are right about the project and RM being in a state of flux...now to figure out how to fix the flux.

The FPJ doesn't list any images at all. I looked at my archived RH7 copy, and that doesn't have any image files listed either. Am I missing something or maybe looking at the wrong FPJ?

I tried generating the Help to a new folder, and still no luck.

[Peter Grainge]

Rh7 did not have a resource manager and now it seems you haven't been using it anyway. You don't have to use RM so it seems like your issue is straight down to an issue with the project.  I really would like to see it. The size is not an issue if you send it in accordance with the instructions on the Contact page of my site.

The project will not be seen by anyone else and will be trashed when the issue has been resolved.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Lady_Jag]

I will try to send the files tomorrow. I was mistaken about the size of my zipped file: it is 140MB and exceeds cutesendit's 100MB limit.

Thanks again!

[Peter Grainge]

Create a copy and delete the contents of the SSL folder. Still over 100mb?

If yes, Google should find something. I will look in the morning. It's late here now. Anyone have a suggestion?