performance on large help projects

[Guest]

hello,

has anyone else experienced performance issues in a robohelp html project of a large(ish) size? i've got a project that is about 26MB, containing about 3,500 files. recently, i'm having trouble even getting the project open. my CPU usage spikes to 100% just trying to do that. i'm wondering if my issue is the overall size and number of files in the project or if it's something going on with my actual PC. i don't experience the performance problem in any other apps or in any other robohelp project (all of the rest are significantly smaller than this one, though).

any thoughts? thanks.

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi briccio and welcome to the forums. We occasionally see posts like yours on these forums. To be honest it is very difficult to get to the bottom of these problems without knowing more. What tends to effect the speed at which a project opens depends on lots of factors (e.g. number/size of images, number of links, mapids, DHTML effects, build tags, etc. etc.). 3500 topics is large but not abnormally so. I know of authors with 10K topics and they don't have your problem. Have you considered splitting the project into sub-projects and merging them into a master?

[Peter Grainge]

It might be as simple as the underlying database in RH needs compacting and I would explore that before going down the merged project route.

If Briccio is using X5 that basically involves taking a copy of the project for safety, then deleting the CPD and XPJ files before reopening the project using the HHP file. Before doing that you should create a CHM file even if that is not your normal output. See the topic on my site about opening projects. It is all explained there.

Also I am assuming the project is not on a network.

[Guest]

hello and thanks for the replies. just a few more details to maybe clarify the situation:

-we are using X5
-we are using robohelp across a network
-under "normal" circumstances opening any help project across our network takes well under a minute
-there are few if any DHTML effects and builds tags, etc. in the project in question; however
-a unique aspect of this project, as opposed to the others in which we pretty much never see this performance issue, is the high % of graphic files
-we've thought about splitting this project into a master/subordinates structure. however, as the project itself is already a subordinate project in a structure involving 39 other projects, we've found that once we start to nest like this, we see performance issues in the webhelp output, namely it takes the TOC applet a while to load.
-i did manage to get the problem project open by deleting the .cpd and .xpj files and then opening the .hhp file; however, now that i'm back to trying to work in it, performance is still agonizingly slow, and this is even after copying down to my local drive and attempting to work with it there.
-normal output for this project is both chm and webhelp and they're both created regularly.

does this info suggest any other possible course of action?

many thanks!

[prhmusic]

Red flag!

Don't use RoboHelp across a network. Try running it from a local C:\drive instead.

Paul Hanson
Technical Writer
Adobe Community Expert - RoboHelp
http://www.macromedia.com/support/forums/team_macromedia/team_members/200.html
Quintrex Data Systems
http://www.quintrex.com

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by: prhmusic
Red flag!

Don't use RoboHelp across a network. Try running it from a local C:\drive instead.

Paul Hanson
Technical Writer
Adobe Community Expert - RoboHelp
http://www.macromedia.com/support/forums/team_macromedia/team_members/200.html
Quintrex Data Systems
http://www.quintrex.com

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thanks, but i don't think running it across the network is the issue here. we are a multi-author shop with several multi-project help systems. everything is and always has been out on a network, and yet it's just this one project in which we've got this problem. further, pulling the project down locally and working with it that way does not alleviate the problem.

[RoboColum_n_]

briccio. You may well have used all your projects across a network for decades but that does not disguise the fact that there are many posts here from other users who like you hit problems. Once they move their files off the network, the problem disappears. The underlying Access database in RH is well documented as having problems when run over the network. The advice here and elsewhere is not to risk it. If your project has a "high % of graphic files" that is probably the issue here. I bet if you made a project copy and deleted the image files, the speed would be much quicker. Could you experiment with the image resolution, size, etc. and see if that makes a difference. Perhaps also save the images in a different format. You haven't mentioned whether the images are BMPs, JPGs, GIFs, etc.