Robohelp HTML command-line utility overwrites merged files in .hhp file with absolute paths. Any way to prevent this?

[maryd42467491]

I have a Robohelp 11 HTML project which uses merged CHM files. I have a help build script which compiles this project using the RH command-line utility. Whenever this runs, RH overwrites the names of the merged CHM files in the .hhp file to use absolute paths (even if the .hhp file is read-only!). I've searched Adobe forums and this appears to be a RH bug. In my case, it doesn't stop the project performing the merge, but it looks like it causes problems when searching the resultant parent CHM (topics matching the search simply don't show up in child projects), as the search cannot necessarily find the merged files referenced in the .hhp when someone performs the search on a different machine. I notice that if I compile via the RH UI, the .hhp entries are not overwritten. So, a workaround is to do the build manually. However, we'd like to automate our help build. Is there any way to prevent the command-line compiler overwriting the merge file entries in the .hhp?

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

While I don't have any immediate answer to the issue, I would strongly encourage you to report this to Adobe as a bug so it gets on their radar.

Click here to file a bug report.

Cheers... Rick

[maryd42467491]

Thanks. Done!

[Peter Grainge]

This was a problem with Rh9, see Item 13 at Using RoboHelp 9

I haven't seen it reported since but maybe something at that link will help.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[maryd42467491]

Thanks, Peter! I recall seeing that post when I scoured the Adobe forums, and it seems to work for a manual compile, but not for command-line compile. 😕 I may need to go with manual compile for now as a workaround...

I'm using RH11, so if the issue was fixed in 9.0.2., I ought not to see it anymore. Perhaps the fact that this project was upgraded from RH9 has something to do with it...

[Peter Grainge]

I'd try testing a new simple merge to prove or disprove it is the upgrade. Maybe the fix only stopped the problem in new merges and did not clean up.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[maryd42467491]

I checked the .hhp file and the fix stops the command-line compiler from changing relative paths to absolute ones. That solves my problem.