Compiling Japanese CHMs in RoboHTML 7

[Guest]

I'm thinking of switching from RoboHTML 2002 (old, I know, but it works for us) to the new RoboHelp 7. One of the features that's most attractive to me is Unicode support--I like the idea that we can use one tool for English and localized help.

However, as I'm running the RoboHelp 7 demo through some tests with a Japanese help project, Japanese characters are displayed properly in the HTML editor pane but not in the TOC or Index (in the RoboHelp window or in the compiled output).

I'm compiling on an English Windows XP installation, and I've even tried using AppLocale to run RoboHTML with a Japanese code page, but I get the same non-Unicode characters in the TOC and Index.

When I compile, RoboHelp tells me that "HTML help settings has unsupported characters for the chosen language. Do you want to continue?"

The project's language is set to Japanese under File > Project Settings. Is there another setting that I'm missing?

Thanks!

[Guest]

km_canney, welcome to the forums.

See if this thread helps. Let us know.

Good luck,

Ben

[Guest]

Thanks, Ben.

No joy here. For what it's worth, I do have the language packs installed.

I've tried setting the TOC and Index font to Courier New (and Arial Unicode and Meiryo), and I still get non-Unicode characters in the TOC and Index.

Please see http://tinyurl.com/2nb32q for an example.

I'm definitely not ruling out user error <g>, but it looks as if upgrading wouldn't be as clean as I'd hoped.

-Kevin

[Guest]

Kevin,

Are you running with an upgraded project? Check out your .hhc (TOC) and .glo (glossary) files using a text editor. Are the characters corrupted there? If so, you can fix that by pasting the correct characters back in either in RoboHelp or into the files themselves. Kind of tedious, but if that's the problem, this should fix it. I think I had similar problems with upgrading my Japanese project--probably stemming from the fact that previous versions of RH didn't support Japanese.

--Ben

[Guest]

Ben--

This is a project that was upgraded from RH2002.

If I open my .hhc file in Notepad (using AppLocale to run Notepad w/ a JPN code page), the characters in the <param name="Name" value="概要"> entries display correctly in Japanese, so I don't think the problem lies in the .hhc/.hhk files.

Now, if I right-click a page in RoboHTML and choose Properties, the corrupt characters are displayed in the Page Title box at the top of the TOC Page Properties box, but the correct JPN characters are displayed in the Existing Topics list below. (?!)

On a lark, I created a new project, set its language to JPN, and started pasting in JPN topic titles and index keywords. With this project, the JPN characters display properly in the RoboHelp window, in the TOC Page Properties window, and in the compiled output.

I think you're right that there's a glitch in the update process. Manually fixing TOC Page Properties is not an option, though--our projects are too large.

Surely there's a way to make this work (or for Adobe to fix it for a point release)?

-Kevin

[---Dirk_Bock]

Kevin,

this looks very much like a missing Font statement in the HHK and HHC. If you want to use any other than plain Western fonts, you have to add a line like <param font= ... to the contents and index files.

I don't know how to handle this in RH7, but at least you can check in the files wether this is indeed the error.

---Dirk Bock

[Guest]

Dirk--

I don't think a missing Font statement is the problem.

I've created a small sample Japanese project that displays JPN characters correctly in the RoboHelp window and in the compiled output, and it .hhk and .hhc files contain no font statements. The code from the .hhc and .hhk files that RoboHelp 7 generated follows. I think I'm getting closer, though. More news to follow shortly. <g>

Thanks,
-Kevin

[Guest]

I've upgraded projects in Japanese to Robohelp 7 and I have not had any problems with that. You only need to change the language settings in Windows XP (Control panel > Regional and language options). In the Regional Options tab change the country to Japan. In the Advanced tab change the language to Japanese. Then reboot. Of course, the corresponding language pack should be installed. Make sure the checkbox corresponding to Japanese is enabled on the Advanced tab. Windows may prompt you to insert the installation CD.

Both things are necessary for RH7 to work properly in Japanese, or in any other language. Good luck.

[Guest]

Tony--

I'd been trying not to switch my code page to Japanese--if the app truly supports Unicode, it shouldn't be necessary.

Reading your message and talking with one of our engineers triggered a new experiment, though: starting from a new copy of my RoboHTML 2002 project, I started the RoboHelp 7 using a JPN code page and upgraded the project again. This time, JPN characters appear correctly in the TOC and Index in the RoboHelp 7 window. After I compile, the JPN characters are correct in the contents pane and in the Index, but the TOC characters are corrupt. Please see an example: http://tinyurl.com/yo6baf.


Taking the example one step further, I restarted RoboHelp 7 normally on my English OS and recompiled. The JPN characters are now corrupted again in the title bar, index, and TOC. If RoboHelp 7 supports Unicode, I wouldn't expect this to happen.

Have you tried AppLocale yet? It accomplishes the same thing as setting your Regional Options, but without having to reboot: http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx.

Any Adobe developers or QA here? I'd be willing to upload my project for you to take a look. RoboHelp 7 looks promising, and I'd like to help get this worked out.

Thanks,
-Kevin

[Guest]

Kevin

Thanks for the Applocale tip. I'm sorry but I can't suggest any other alternative workarounds. As I said, following the steps in my previous post worked fine for me.

Good luck
Tony

[Peter Grainge]

Kevin

Please contact me offline via my site.