RH9 HTML: Publishing Deleted ALL Content from ALL Topics

[Richards_Daddy]

All,

One of my writers was working in a large RH9 HTML file yesterday as per usual, doing nothing out of the ordinary. When he published the WebHelp and Printed Documentation, the results were blank... all topics had no content. When looking in the Project Files pod, each topic was there, but had a red X on the icon, and properties for each one said that topic was "Missing." There was nothing in the PDF or the WebHelp. Again, he did nothing out of the ordinary, he just published those two outputs as he always has.

Since we have a script that backs up these files daily to a versioned environment, we were able to get back good files without the need to recreate too much work, and I'm having this writer blow away and reinstall his version of RH9.

Has anyone run into this before? Is there anything we should look into? I'm worried this will happen again.

Thanks in advance!

[RoboColum_n_]

Out of interest do you use a source control application?

[Richards_Daddy]

Our source files are on a shared drive. They're backed up every night to IBM Rational ClearCase. That saves us checking in/out while still providing version control.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

That could be an issue - only RH10 claims to safely handle shared network locations.

[Richards_Daddy]

I've been using Adobe products with shared network locations for years, and have heard many claims about how working from there hoses everything. I've found it's true for gargantuan projects, and the only symptom I get in that situation is performance (e.g., press the A key within a topic, and a second or two later, the letter A appears). But any non-bloated project has always worked well for me when the .xpj is on a share. We're now doing our own backups onto our desktops just to be safe.

My team found this forum, with a poster who has many of the same issues we had. Mr. Grainge suggests deleting the .cpd file and ensuring your path isn't too long.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/835822

Thanks so much!

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

It's definitely true for RH - you have to remember that deep down inside it, it's got a heart that wasn't built by Adobe - they just acquired the company that acquired it first. The main problem is that RH is an Access database at heart that is none too happy (pre-RH10) working over a network. Peter has warned people for years that working on networked projects is like playing Russian Roulette - 5 out 6 shots, you win - it's that sixth shot that's the project mangler.

BTW - there's a setting in RH to trash the CPD for you every time you open the project - it gets rebuilt each time.