Splitting a large RH 10 project

[billjarnold]

Tried using drag/drop between 2 open projects so I can split a large project into two.

Either it doesn't work or I'm not doing something right (hopefully the latter!)

Thanks
Bill

[Peter Grainge]

Both. You are not doing it right because that way doesn't work.

See Merged Help on my site for some information about splitting projects. Also see your pharmacist for some headache pills.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[billjarnold]

Thanks, Peter. I appreciate your help in pointing to a way this can be done, but that's an incredibly complicated, tedious and error prone way to handle a conceptually simple requirement. Sure, the programming to fulfill this requirement would be tedious, but being able to drag/drop between projects in different windows would be a powerful organizational tool for every RH user whose books have grown large and need re-organization.

[Peter Grainge]

I think my reply rather hinted at the fact it was not going to be an easy solution.

I think the problem with dragging and dropping would be that when you are going to drag Topic 1 and Topic 2, when you drag the first topic, the link to the second topic will not be valid so what is Rh to do? It is the same when you import Word documents that have links.

We don't see many people wanting to do this so I would have to wonder how much resource Adobe would be willing to throw at this solution. Try this link.

http://www.Adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=38

Are you aware that importing allows you to import all the topics in a single folder at the same time? Maybe that would help. It will not resolve broken links though. That is why I used the method I did as I inherited thousands of topics with many links to each other.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[billjarnold]

I appreciate your attention to this issue. It's occurred to me that I should have mentioned a basic reason for looking in this direction: for my 6,800 topic project it takes (I just tested/timed this) 40-45 seconds to insert a  hyperlink into a topic. This is repeatable, not just the 1st time it's used in a session. IMO this is unacceptably slow.

If this weren't happening, I'd have no problem working with the large project. In fact, I'd just as soon not disrupt the existing internal hyperlinks, which splitting the project would necessitate.

Bill

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Question for you here. Are all your topics in a single folder?

If so, creating folders and moving topics into folders would likely solve the speed issue.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

Other thoughts are whether or not you have tried deleting the CPD file (that can cause issues if it grows too large) and is your project stored on a network drive?

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[billjarnold]

Rick: There are 11,000 files in the project folder, roughly half are image files. If there is a utility/tool in RH that would help me split this folder I do that, but the prospect of manually working a file at a time for thousands of files is daunting!

Peter: I deleted the CPD file (7mb) and it rebuilt with 3mb, but to no avail. Still a solid 40 seconds to bring up the add hyperlink screen. Repeating this action in various places always takes the same 40 seconds.

Curiously, when I use FoxPro's ADIR command to obtain a list of the 11,000 files in this folder it completes in about 1-2 seconds. On the surface it appears RH is doing the same thing to get the (smaller) list of the 6,800 HTML files. What could be taking all that time?

Thanks for your thoughts

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Sure, ADIR can do it quickly because all it is doing is grabbing the list of files. Keep in mind that RoboHelp is not only listing the files, but also noting links and image links inside each of the HTML pages. All that has to be tracked and that's likely where the time is being eaten up.

If you are working in the Topic List pod, you are free to select gobs of files and move them at once. You aren't limited to one at a time like you are in the Project Manager pod.

I might suggest making a backup copy and experimenting to see. I'd bet you see huge improvement after some minor rearranging.

Cheers... Rick

[billjarnold]

But 40 seconds is a huge amount of time!

I'm testing what you describe, with a new sub-folder in the project's HTML Files folder and copying multiple test files from the Topics List pod into the new folder in the Project Manager pod, and that seems to work.

But I can't find a way to filter the Topics List to contain files I'd want to group for the move. Actually, since half the files in the project folder are images, maybe just moving them as a big group would help, but I can't get them to appear in the Topics List to be moved. Can this be done?

I should mention that I've recently upgraded from RH 2002 to RH 10, so still getting used to RH 10.

Definitely appreciate the help.

Bill

[Willam_van_Weelden]

If you want to move a big group of images, you may want to use my missing topic fixer script: https://www.wvanweelden.eu/product/missing-topics-fixer

The workflow is as follows:

1. You copy a bunch of topics from one project to another. It could be 10 files or it could be a 1000.
2. Make sure that all style sheets, images, etc. are copied to the correct folders for your topics. (Keeping the same folder structure is preferable.)
3. Make sure that you have the required variables, CBT, etc. in the target project.
4. Run the script.
5. Import the table of contents, index and the like to get up to speed.

Voila, the RH project will have picked up all the moved topics. Of course, you will have to fix any context sensitive help settings, the TOC etc, but you won't have to import topics one by one.

Kind regards,

Willam

[billjarnold]

Thanks, William, but the action I'm considering taking next is moving many image files (JPEG, GIF, etc) from the projects root folder into a sub-folder, thinking this will cut the number of files in the product's root folder in half, which might have a positive effect on performance (unknown until tested).

The Topics List pod will allow moving multiple topics, but it doesn't show image files, nor can I find a way to get them included, so that method of moving files en masse seems not to be available. I understand that I  can't just use Windows Explorer to move these files because doing so will break links to these images in root folder topics, and it appears your method operates on topics, not image files as such.

Considering the difficulties I'm having, I'm starting to think RH doesn't have a lot of support for people dealing with large/multiple projects. These are simple tools I'm looking for!

- moving topics between projects

- moving image files from one folder to another within a project

Bill

[Captiv8r]

I'm not sure if my past project qualifies as "large" or not. But before I left the company, I think there was somewhere nearly 40,000 files involved.

Of course this was a mix of HTML files, images, media and JavaScript files.

As for your situation, I'd bet just moving images to a folder will actually see little to no effect. This is because when you attempt to link to a topic, the list of HTM files is what is consuming the time.

Cheers... Rick

[billjarnold]

Thanks for clarifying that. I was thinking that, given the 40 second response time, that something strange must be accounting for it, and actually scanning image (and now also MP4's) files would qualify

This project has 6,200 HTML files taking 32mb total. Doesn't count as "large", but the slowness seems to be saying it is.

With your "larger" projects, do you recall very slow response when adding hyperlinks?

Bill

[Captiv8r]

Well, that's the point. No, I did not have the speed issue. Then again, I had a very extensive folder structure in place.

I looked through thread and I do note that you never really answered Peter's question. Where exactly is this project located? Is it on your C drive or is it on a network drive? If you come back and say it's on a network location, that likely accounts for some of the speed issue too. I've seen many RoboHelp projects that behave as if they are moving through molasses when the project is on a network. Move them to a local drive (such as C:\Projects) and they become pretty snappy!

Cheers... Rick

[billjarnold]

Rick, based on your experience and that you have a folder structure for topics, I'm thinking my direction should be to proceed with moving topics from the project root folder into sub-folders, even though it will be difficult if all I have is alphabetically sorted files in the Topics List pod to work with. Guess it can happen slowly over time.

Sorry I skipped that question. No, I'm not using a network drive. All RH projects are locally stored on my machine.

Sure wish I could get past the 40 sec waits to add hyperlinks. It's discouraging to add them. Should be the other way around.

Bill

[Captiv8r]

Okay, here's a thought

Make a backup copy of your project. Create three folders inside. Move roughly a third of the topics into each folder. Then try to create hyperlinks and see if the speed is improved.

The sweet thing about RoboHelp is that if you move topics into folders, it will keep track of the links and adjust them accordingly. (and that's the reason it slows so much when you have so many topics inside a folder)

The whole experiment should take less than maybe fifteen minutes to perform. If you are happy with the result, you can then create other folders and move topics as needed.

Cheers... Rick

[billjarnold]

Rick,

Not the large test you suggest, but I have done it with several topics created in sub-folders of the root folders for testing, and the add hyperlink response was almost instant, so I believe this solution has promise.

What I'd like to do is break up the project using the TOC as a guide. If only I could drag/drop files from the TOC pod into the Project Manager pod.

Thanks,

Bill

[Peter Grainge]

I have added a 0 in the first line as you say 11,000 later. I found many versions back that performance does tail off at a point which is a combination of sheer number of files and images. For me I found 4/5,000 was the point to split so 11,000 causing issues does not surprise me.

This will sound whacky but I had a problem a while back where a dialog took ages to come up. Then one day while waiting I idly clicked the mouse over a blank area of the task bar, it came up instantly.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[billjarnold]

Peter, I wish I could say your trick works here, but clicking in the Windows task bar doesn't do anything and clicking anywhere in the RH screen only gets "not responding", yet the dialog comes up eventually.

Bill