migrating from WinHelp to HtmlHelp

[epsobolik]

I am using RoboHelp X5 for MS Word. We've been using WinHelp in our apps, but since Vista doesn't support it, we have to migrate to HtmlHelp. So, I created another Single Source Layout and built it. I then ran CSH test to see if I could display a message. I selected the generated .chm, selected a map file, and a mapped #. When I clicked 'Show Help' nothing happened.

I can find the topic in RoboHelp and the properties have the same ID and map # as in the map file. I can run the .chm standalone and search for the message and display it. So, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the .chm file. Just the map links.

What is a little peculiar is that I don't get any response at all from CSH Test. Any ideas?

[epsobolik]

I believe I have found the problem. I opened one of the sampe help projects that used a map file (.hh) and generated the help file and successfully ran CSH test on a several map ID's. I then noticed that .hm files (what we used for WinHelp) are in a different format than .hh - .hh use #define <helpid> <mapid> where, .hm uses just <helpid> <mapid>. So, copied and re-formated the .hh so that it was a .hm. Lo and behold, CSH test didn't work.

My conclusion is that HtmlHelp doesn't work with .hm map files. Is this true? Are there other differences between WinHelp and HtmlHelp that we should know about? I suspect there will be a mad rush to leave WinHelp in favor of HtmlHelp, since Vista doesn't support WinHelp. Maybe a whitepaper about migrating would be helpful.

Phil

[mgud]

Hi Phil

I came to the same conclusion that HTMLHelp doesn't work with .hm files. RoboHelp recognizes the map ids and numbers, so I'm able to assign the map ids to topics. But after I generate the HTMLHelp, and try to open it within our application I get no response.

Our developers wrote a simple program that converts .hm files to .h files. (It simply adds the #define statement at the beginning of every line.) When I import this file I don't need to reassign the map ids because RoboHelp already recognizes that I've mapped them from the .hm file. So everything works. I just took a little tinkering to figure out the problem.

- Maura

[Guest]

Hello Phil

As far as I'm aware, the software calling the help file needs to call the <filename>.chm::/<filename>.html

This is how we have implemented it.

Sean