RoboHelp 6 Search Limitations?

[MondoStarCite]

Hi, we're defining our online help requirements for a new web-based application and was hoping to get some confirmation on whether something was possible.

We will be providing our users with topic help and context-sensitive help and we would like to provide the ability to search across multiple help sources from a single screen. I'm trying to determine if this is natively supported using the available search function in RoboHelp6.

Thanks for your help!

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

It depends on what you mean by multiple help sources. If you create a merged webhelp setup, as described on my site, the search will work across the whole set up. Also it would work if you installed any one of the child outputs.

If you are talking about a number of quite separate outputs, then each one would have a search but you would not have a search across the whole lot. To do something like that you would need a third party search ZoomSearch is one tool that can do what you want and my site describes how to set that up.

[Bob_Anonymous]

I'm having trouble getting ZoomSearch to work. I've tried to follow the instructions on your site.

I'm getting 'Page Not Found' because the results pages are pointing to:
"FOLDER..!SSL!/RoboInfo_Output/pagename.htm" instead of the real url (FOLDER/pagename.htm".... so I think I'm pointing to wrong folders when I create my search index, but I've tried several ways of doing it. It must be easy to fix, but I can't figure out.

1. In my project under HTML files I created a new folder "search_files".
2. In my published output folder, I created a folder with the same name.
3. I ran ZoomSearch and with Offline mode, navigated to my Project folder.
4. For the base url, I selected ../ (not sure if this is correct, but my search_files folder in the Output folder is two levels down from my main Project folder.)
5. I did Javascript method and for Output options, created index files in the search_files folder in my Output folder (not sure if this is correct, but tried other options too.)
6. Under HTML folders, highlighted search_files and imported search.html that is located in the Output folder.
7. I added my search.html page to my TOC and published.
8. The correct search results will come up, but when I click on the links I get Page Not Found because the path is pointing to my Output folder.

From this, can you see what I'm doing wrong??? The longer I spend trying to fix this, the more confused and frustrated I get!
THANKS!

[MergeThis]

You say "I selected ../ ," then you say "my search_files folder in the Output folder is two levels down from my main Project folder" and further you say "I added my search.html page to my TOC and published."

I would create a workflow diagram on a white board to determine where everything is, then determine just exactly what the path names should be. That seems to be the issue, here.


Good luck,
Leon

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

Bob it's too late for me to look at this tonight and I am in a meeting pretty much all day tomorrow.

1] Go through the instructions again very slowly. Have you printed them? I often find just doing that and ticking things off finds the problem.

2] If that doesn't help contact me via my site and send me your ZoomSearch configuration file. In your email let me know how big the project is zipped up.

I'll look as soon as I can.

[Peter Grainge]

MergeThis has picked up on a point I missed. You are trying to run this from the TOC. What I always ask people when they tell me they cannot get something on my site to work is firstly to try it in a small project and second not to attempt any variations.

The small project is simply to avoid messing up your live project and the request to do it my way first is to prove to yourself it does work. Then you know that when it doesn't work done another way, it is the variation that is the problem.

[Bob_Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to take a look at it again when I have some time. I did print the instructions. I guess I'm just not totally understanding.

Currently, I am using a javascript search function (JSE Internal Search Engine), and it is actually working great for me. Perhaps the only downside is that you have to manually enter in your search pages (title, url, description, keywords), but this is just fine for me. Every time I create a new page, it just takes 2 minutes to add it to the .js search code. I have over 400 pages on my site that I've made searchable and can control exactly what I want the description to be and what the keywords should be. It's fast and free.

I can see the benefit of using Zoom search though so it will automatically index the pages. So manually putting your pages in the search engine may not work for everyone, but it's worth checking out.

What I still don't understand is how a company as big as Adobe gets away with offering such a terrible search engine - unless they've fixed this with ver 6? It makes absolutely no sense to me that people need to go purchase an external search engine like ZoomSearch, after spending big $$$ on an Adobe product. I quickly got lots of complaints from my users that the search fuction sucked, but everyone is much happier now that I've implemented the JS search.

[johndaigle]

Hi, this is a bit off topic but just thought I'd mention that Search Highlighting is among the many the new features planned for RoboHelp 7. It is in development now and expected to be released later this year. Search highlighting is implemented very well in the "sneak peek" we saw at STC in Minneapolis last week. The color is configurable by the author and the user has the option of turning it on and off. So, this won't help you now, but is something to look forward to.

You can read more details on this forum post.

john

[Bob_Anonymous]

Highlighting?..... that's it?

How will the search engine in RoboHelp 7 compare to ZoomSearch?

[johndaigle]

Hi, Bob Anonymous.

Search highlighting is simply a feature that was demo'd live in a half hour session that was crammed with so many new things it was hard to keep up. Not all the Search functions were explored. They emphasized that this is a pre-alpha build and not feature complete. They just wanted to take advantage of a rare opportunity to get reaction and comments from the STC audience.

We'll just have to sit tight until we can sign up for the beta which will be announced on Adobe's TechComm Blog (Don't know exact time?)

Meanwhile, thanx for your comments. Like Peter, Rick, Craig, myself and others on this forum, I think it's important you add your suggestions. It counts

I've found it really makes a difference with Adobe when they see confirmation for the need for certain workflows or functionality.

john