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We are using RoboHelp 9.0.271 to publish WebHelp Pro to a RoboServer. We have been publishing our help this way for over a year. We also create a WebHelp version of the same project that is shipped with the software. The project is fairly large - over 1700 topics and we keep our source in Perforce.
We just noticed yesterday that some of our books are now missing from our TOC. We are not sure when they disappeared but we do know that they used to be present. The books are still showing in our WebHelp project, just not out WebHelp Pro project that is published to RoboServer. It is only affected a book at the third level so a book inside a book inside a book. They are not consistently missing. Some or not all books at the third level are missing, even in the same main book. There seems to be no correlation between ones that are missing or not missing. We have the project published several times on the server in different areas representing the different releases of the project. They have all been affected in the same way so we believe there is some server issue.
We installed the patch listed in http://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/books-topics-missing-toc-webhelp.html. After we installed that patch, when a book was clicked on we got the message, "Loading, click here to cancel". We had to revert to our earlier snapshot to get out of this mess.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. We have run out of options to try.
Thanks in advance,
Nita
Adobe found the cause of the problem that NDRHelp was having and issued a fix that has worked. They are working on another issue that affects these files and once that is addressed they will make the solution available via the Knowledge Base.
Please post here if you need the existing fix before the Knowledge Base article is made available (a link to it will be added here in due course).
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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Hi Nita,
What is the version of RoboHelp Server you are using? Can you share the project with me at pibhatna@adobe.com
Thanks and regards,
Piyush
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Thank you for responding. We are using RoboHelp 9 but we just upgraded
to RH 10 yesterday and still have the same issue. I can share the
project with you however, it is quite large (527 MB). Is there some
place I could put a project of that size?
Thanks,
Nita
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Nita. Check your topic file names for any odd characters. I seem to remember things like &, <, >, / all cause issues.
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Thank you Colum for your reply.
I see _ and ( ) in file names but none of the characters you have mentioned. Do you think the ( ) could be causing my issues? We have had () in file names for a long time and haven't had this issue but who knows.
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Those characters are fine Nita. Have you tried publishing to different test area? If this looks OK, delete the output from your live area using the Web Administrator and republish.
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Yes, actually, we have versions of this project published in several different areas and we are getting the same result in all.
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Sorry Nita. I've been quite busy and am only just able to respond. Can you create an account at http://www.cutesendit.com/ (if you haven't already got one) zip up your source files and send the zip file to me at robocolumn AT cmcandrew DOT com. I'll take a look at your project and get back to you. It may not be until the weekend though.
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No worries Colum. It is kind of you to try to help. I know you are most likely quite busy. I have emailed it to you. My co-worker uploaded the project to dropbox as the cutsendit site has a limit of 100 MB and even when zipped it was too large. Thank you so much for any help you can provide.
Nita
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No problem Nita. I've got the zip file now. I will try and look at this later today (Friday) and let you know what I find.
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Hi Nita.
I think I have found what is causing your issue: your file names. In your Cookbook Examples > Mapping Messages > Advanced Copying book you have a file called -_Cookbook_Example__Converting_NTE_Segments_to_OBX_Segments_in_an_ORU_Message.htm. This is 81 characters on its own but when this is placed inside other sub directories the path becomes very long. I suspect that the issue is that the path is more than 255 characters.
I haven't tested this but I think you'll have to reduce the file name size on quite a few of your topics. I'll try and test this more to confirm this but wanted to let you know the progress to date.
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Thank you Colum. I never thought about the length causing an issue with
this. We can test more here as well. I really appreciate your time!
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Hi Nita. Can you give me an example of a book that you'd expect to see in the TOC? You have a number of conditional build tag expressions in the project so it is fairly different for an outsider like me to understand what you actually want to exclude.
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Hi Nita. Can you give me an example of a book that you'd expect to see in the TOC? You have a number of conditional build tag expressions in the project so it is fairly different for an outsider like me to understand what you actually want to exclude.
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Sure - under Message Mapping\Applying Business Rules\ you see only one book named "Action Lists". You should see 11 more including Subscription Pools, Associations, Mapping Message Content, Modifying Messages, Documenting the Business Rules, etc.
As I was working on testing your earlier suggestion, I noticed that some of the books appear in the one book that stayed in location. For example, Subscription Pools from the previous example appear in the Action Lists book.
I just deleted all the file paths that were longer than 240 characters in a test project and compiled it. When I publish I still get the wacky TOC.
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Additional information. Yesterday I thought maybe it was an issue with a corrupt table of contents or perhaps the server we were publishing to. So, on the project where I had deleted all the files that had paths over 230 characters long I created a new Table of Contents with only the first three books in my project. The third book had the three levels of books in it where we have been failing. To alleviate the question of the server, we created a local server to publish to. Unfortunately, we still saw the same failure on the third level of books on the local server.
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Since yesterday, we have created a small project with only the topics in the small TOC that we created yesterday to determine if there was some magic top level of topics that could be included. Our TOC has three top level books. The third book has several instances of a third-level book in the TOC. Only the first instance of a third-level TOC book appears. So, based on our testing I can only assume that third-level TOC books inside of books are not supported for some reason, although I have seen them work in a tiny test project that really had no content only enough dummy topics to test with. My plan is at this time to flatten out our TOC to see if that will resolve our issues. I'm leaving breadcrumbs so if anyone in the future his this issue they may know what we have tried that has failed, giving them somewhere to start.
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Hi Nita.
I have been spending time looking at your project inbetween other things. I started to rebuild your TOC in a new TOC file from scratch one book at a time and published. It all went perfectly OK until I got to the Cookbook Examples one. Once that is added you start to get the issues you describe. What I haven't narrowed down is what exactly is causing this.
One thing I have noticed throughout your project is that there are a lot of broken TOC links (i.e. the TOC page does not link anywhere). As a result they are missing from the published help. From the look of the few I examined, there do appear to be topics in the project to which they should link. For example take the Message Mapping > Applying Business Rules > Action Lists > Testing Action Lists book. In there is a TOC page called "Determining which Lines in an Action List Have Executed". There are even whole books where non of the pages have a valid link. One of those is in the Cookbook Examples book.
Before doing anything esle I'd correct these to see if they are causing the issue. It may also be worth creating a new TOC and copying / pasting all the books except the Cookbook Examples one into it. If you get the same as me, we now where the issue is. I should say that I am using RoboHelp 9 published to RoboHelp Server 8 so there maybe a slight difference. Let us know how you get on.
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@Colum
I am wondering if this another example of an ongoing problem? There are a number of posts in these forums where things go wrong when you get to lower levels. I have submitted projects to Adobe and I know they have tried very hard to replicate the problem but as soon as they get the project, it works just fine.
One thing I have found that is worth a try, you say it goes wrong at Cookbooks. Try moving that book to within an entirely different book but still at the same level. Whether or not that works, give me phone call after you tried that please.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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Thank you Peter. I tested moving the books out from under the book I am having issues with and they are working. I did a test project of two, three, four, and five levels and cannot get the bad behavior making me think there is some combination of issues occurring. We are still working to attempt to figure out what is going on here.
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I am making some enquiries.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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Thank you Peter.
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Are you willing to share the project with me please? If you are, please see the Contact page on my site. I will be sharing the project with Adobe as well but no one else.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
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I would be happy to share, Peter. Thank you. I will email you a location
where you can download it from. Thank you for any help you can provide.
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Adobe found the cause of the problem that NDRHelp was having and issued a fix that has worked. They are working on another issue that affects these files and once that is addressed they will make the solution available via the Knowledge Base.
Please post here if you need the existing fix before the Knowledge Base article is made available (a link to it will be added here in due course).
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips