Thanks for your reply Peter.
Yes, it is indeed a limitation of RoboHelp and the way it
uses HTML:
* The topic title that appears in the topic's properties and
in search results is stored in the HTML head <title> element.
* The HTML 4.01 standard does not permit other elements
inside <title> (see
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.4.2).
* Therefore, variables (which function via the
<uservariable> tag) do not work in topic titles. Attempting
to do so will result in all topic titles being cut off at the point
where the <uservariable> tag ends, and will also (at least in
my case) crash RoboHelp when you attempt to open the topic.
A workaround:
1. Create a backup of your help project.
2. Use some find/replace tool or script to change the topic
titles. In my case I used a series of Perl commands to do a find
and replace. E.g.:
perl -pi -e 's/\<title\>How to change a
variable\<\/title\>/\<title\>How to change a
tyre\<\/title\>/' How_to.htm
I hope Adobe finds a way to fix this problem. It is a serious
limitation.