1st row of ALI-file does not work

Hi,

Me and my colleagues have been wrestling with a weird issue the last few days.

We’re working at a software company making a Windows application.
We are using RoboHelp 7 to create a CHM for this.
In RoboHelp we’re adding lots of Map IDs, and assigning these to various topics in order for the HELP buttons in the application to launch specific topics.

For example, we could create a topic that has the HTML file: bar_chart_properties.htm
This we’d create a Topic ID for: bar_chart_properties
…and map this to a Map Number: 100120

The developers here would then use this Map Number to hook up the appropriate HELP button to launch the CHM on the proper topic. Everything works fine so far.

RoboHelp has two files that are relevant for context-sensitive help mapping.

BSSCDefault.h which looks like this and maps Topic ID to Map Number:
#define intro_introduction 10000
#define cross_how_to_use_the_cross_table 102000
#define bar_how_to_use_the_bar_chart 103000
…

myProject.ali which looks like this and maps Topic IDs to HTML-pages:
bar_properties_fonts=bar\bar_properties_fonts.htm
curve_details_reference_line=curve\curve_details_on_reference_line.htm
load_details_on_search_for_the_missing_file=load\load_details_on_search_for_the_missing_f ile.htm
…


Okay, so here’s the issue: the topic that happens to be on the first row of the ALI-file will not open, when clicking the HELP button for that.
We’ve tested this pretty extensively. Doesn’t matter which topic it is - if it’s on the first row, it won’t work.
We tried running RoboHelp on both Windows XP and Windows Vista to see if that had any relevance, but no.
For a while we thought it was the presence of a so called UTF-8 BOM marker at the beginning of the ALI-file, but that had no impact.
It’s just the first row that somehow doesn’t get properly handled when compiled into the final CHM.
If we edit the ALI-file and change places between topics, and then open RoboHelp and compile a new CHM - then the new topic that is on the first row will not launch from the corresponding HELP button in our application.

Anyone else have encountered similar issues? And have suggestions for how to solve the issue, or a workaround?

We tried placing a dummy entry at the top of the ALI-file which sort of works, but as soon as you edit a Context ID from within RoboHelp, it shuffles all the entries in the file, seemingly at random, so the dummy entry gets moved.

Best regards,
/Tom Lindahl
Sweden