I’ve not been the only person to come across this
problem in recent weeks, but have tinkered around enough to come up
with a workaround or two.
First, let’s define where the problem is occurring.
Disclaimer: I have not tested all flavors of RH7 authoring. My
use is limited to RoboHelp7 for HTML, in a project set up for
HTMLHelp output.
When you want to add an image, you get the following dialog,
right? Here’s the default
Insert Image dialog:
http://www.photosbykathy313.us/forums/RH7/default-insert-img.jpg
Then, if the image you want has not yet been used in your
project, you need to navigate to go find it, right? Click the
little folder icon and the
Select Image File (aka the “browse” dialog)
displays:
http://www.photosbykathy313.us/forums/RH7/browse-dialog.jpg
Locate and select the desired file and click
Open. Here is where the bug is occurring: some images can be
selected and others seemingly cannot. (Symptom: the image file name
is not returned, and there is no image preview shown.) It’s
the files with the “too long” physical filepath names
that are not being carried back to the previous Insert Image
dialog.
Second, let’s verify the operation of the Insert Image
dialog.
Click any image that is already listed, and the file name
goes up to the
Image Name field at the top of the screen. In my help
project I have one folder for topic files and another folder for
image files. So I’ve selected
All Folders in this example to display all the file names
that have already been used elsewhere in the project:
http://www.photosbykathy313.us/forums/RH7/all-folders.jpg
Select a file from this list, the Image Name field is
populated….
http://www.photosbykathy313.us/forums/RH7/select-one.jpg
…and the resulting IMG tag looks like this:
http://www.photosbykathy313.us/forums/RH7/IMG-tag.jpg
So, there is nothing wrong at all with the Insert Image
dialog.
Ok, time for the workaround.
But maybe you can already guess what that might be? I have
two ideas, actually, both based on the premise that the IMG tag
is a relative reference and does not care where the physical
filepath points to or how many characters it is.
*** Temporarily, select the “wrong” file name to
complete the Insert Image operation and create the IMG tag.
(It’s already been added to the project, and we’ve
proven that the Insert Image dialog works correctly. So this
workaround takes advantage of that.) Then switch over to HTML view
for your topic, and manually retype in the correct file name into
the IMG tag. This is easier if both file names are in the same
folder, then you don’t have to fuss with the other subfolder
names in the IMG tag file path.
*** Prior to using the “too long” name in the
project, switch over to Windows Explorer and rename the file to
something very short. Like x.jpg. (This is, of course, assuming
that the rest of the physical filepath name itself does not exceed
the character length on which the Select Image File dialog fails.)
Go back to RH7 and use the Insert Image dialog to add this file
into your topic. Save the topic. Locate the image in the Project
Manager pod and rename the image file to what it is “supposed
to be”. Save all.
With either workaround, the image with the “too
long” filepath displays correctly, and the CHM output will
compile successfully too. I conclude that the Insert Image dialog
works just fine, and that the bug is limited to only the Select
Image File dialog.
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