New to RoboHelp - v5.0.2 ?

[SISk12]

Hello!

Sorry that I may have misplaced this thread here, but I really don't know where it is supposed to go.. I have searched through the forums but maybe my search strings are off.

Here at my office, I have been assigned the undertaking of keeping our documentation up to date within our robohelp system.. What does this mean? Well I really don't know. I barely know my way around robohelp and wouldn't you know? I don't have the time between Captivate and training to really familiarize myself with it, other than booting it up and crashing around in it..

Here is my problem. I was asked by my boss, to find out if we would be able to havea link for the user of our system to print off whatever they were looking at. My answer "Sure!" Then the puzzler was dropped on me:
"Would they also then be able to print off that chapter or sub-chapter?"
Doh!! I have been looking around but don't see anything that just screams out to me to be related to printing within the system. Just to clarify, I do not want to print this documentation, but rather be able to throw in a link (or button what have you..), that would allow a user to print off all of the pages within a particular chapter/book.

I'm sorry if I am not making any sense. Thanks for any help in advance!

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi SISk12.

First of all the terminology of "rohelp system" probably refers to the RoboHelp project or projects (i.e. the physical windows directories) where your projects exist. All the files associated with a RoboHelp project are stored in a directory.

Now as far as printing is concerned, the answer is "Yes" to all your questions but how you do this depends on the type of output being produced. How is the help being delivered (e.g. as a single standalone file (.CHM) on each PC or as a set of web based HTML files published to a central location)? if you let us know, we will be able to help you further.

[SISk12]

Hi Colum!

Thank you for the reply. "rohelp" I did not mention.. I do not know where you got that from ,but what you describe "rohelp" as is correct. I do have a set of "workfiles" and then an actual "project file" for robohelp. The system is HTML I believe. It is an integrated system for our web-based application (SISK12). I can give you a link to a sample instance for reference via a PM or email if you would like, to get a better perception of what we are doing with it. We have everything pretty much set up (I think - i wasn't a big part of hte inital development of this system; just charged with it's maintenance and updating).

Sorry if I have typos. I try to catch the ones I can, but this DiNovo Wireless Desktop of mine has been very well used and abused in the last 8 months that I have had it! (space bar is getting finicky!)

Thank you for the reply and the help!

-Jeremy

[RoboColum_n_]

quote:

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Originally posted by: SISk12
Sorry if I have typos.

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Jeremy I should be the one apologising! I meant "RoboHelp" not RoHelp! In my defence I got called away to a meeting half way through responding. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it
OK. If your help file is a CHM file, that is installed on the user's PC with the application, they - the users - should can have a print facility. You can add a Print button to the toolbar that normally displays at the top of the help. When clicked it gives the option to print only the displayed topic or all the topics below it in the Table of Contents book. You can add the button in your Window properties.

[SISk12]

Ahh no this help system is integrated into our web application. I have created a user for you to try it out with, to see first hand if you like.

the URL is : http://sdmtest.sisk12.com/doc5

Username is : TESTUSER
there is no password. When you get logged in, and are at the "Staff Home" screen, click on the help icon (should be a question mark right there on the page). that will pull up the system we are working with. As far as I know everything is server-side.
No reason to apologize! I appreciate the help thus-far! :)

-Jeremy

[RoboColum_n_]

OK I understand a bit more now. What you have there is classic Webhelp output. This is a collection of files designed to run on a server or website. So now that we talking the same language we can try and solve the problem.

I see that you have a print icon at the top of each topic to achieve the objective of printing the content of each topic. So far so good. However to print the content of each chapter or sub-chapter is not so straight forward with Webhelp. My previous response referred to Compiled HTML help (.CHM files) so you can scrap that.

The way I'd achieve your requirement is to generate a PDF of the required chapters. You can easily do this in RoboHelp using the Printed Documentation single source layout. Once you have the PDF you can link to it from inside each topic. Typically it would be useful to see in which topics the link to the PDF is required (e.g. the Overview topic).