Inspiring

Answered

Bookmarks simply do not export to XLIFF

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
November 7, 2023
5 replies
956 views

It seems that the XLIFF conversion is not really up to par as bookmarks simply disappear when you export a topic with a bookmark to an XLIFF file. If this issue is confirmed, that would be a rather serious problem.

Reproduction steps

1 - Create a topic with a bookmark (no text associated with bookmark in this case, but the same happens if you bookmark text)

2 - export this topic

Result: bookmarks are not exported along with other text in the XLIFF file

Correct answer Stefan Gentz

On investigating this further with RoboHelp 2022.3., I can confirm that there is a bug related to bookmark handling in specific scenarios.

I have tested this scenario:

<p>Bookmark: <a id="ThisIsBookmark1"></a></p>
<p>Bookmark: <a id="ThisIsBookmark2"></a>.</p>
<p><a id="ThisIsBookmark3"></a></p>
<a id="ThisIsBookmark4"></a>

Resulting translation (here: German):

<p>Lesezeichen: </p>
<p>Lesezeichen: .</p>
<p><a id="ThisIsBookmark3"></a></p>
<a id="ThisIsBookmark4"></a>

As you can see, in the first two cases, the bookmark gets lost, and in the other two cases it remains.

This might help you as an intermediate workaround until the bug is fixed.

I have created a ticket for this, that you can track here: RH-12164.

A

Alexander5E53

Participant

Hi everybody. I'm attempting to do translations via XLIFF myself (first time trying) and am encountering this same problem. After import, all the bookmarks are removed from my project. It will take a while to create new bookmarks and update the hyperlinks in my help file, so if there's a fix for this I'd really like to know. FYI, I'm running 2020.3.32.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

@Alexander5E53 As you can see it's a known bug so the first thing would be to see if it has been fixed in the three updates since 2022.3.

https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/fixed-issues.html

Hey presto! In Update 4

Open RoboHelp and go to Help > Check for Updates.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

Use menu (bottom right) to mark as Best Answer or to Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

S

Stefan Gentz

Community Manager

The XLIFF only contains the translatable text extracted from the source document. It is not a complete representation of the full HTML-DOM, and XLIFF is not meant to represent that. That is, if your bookmark does not contain translatable text (and an ID is not meant for translation), it will not show up in the XLIFF-Structure.

At the beginning of the XLIFF file you will find the full HTML document in Base64 encoding. The XLIFF tree then contains the translatable strings, identifiable against the HTML with the ID attributes which gives the full XPATH to the corresponding element in the (embedded) HTML file. When importing the translated XLIFF, the translated strings are injected back into the HTML file embeded in the XLIFF file.

W

WoutJacobsAuthor

Inspiring

Hi, thank you for answering and clearing that up.

The problem is that when importing the XLIFF, the bookmark simply does not show up in the translated topic. Could you confirm that this should (not) be the case? I've tested with another new project and keep encountering this problem:

The original topic with a bookmark

I created a new translation project (e.g. Czech), exported the XLIFF for the topic, and imported it again. The translated topic does not have the bookmark:

I would be ecstatic if it were an error on my part but I consistently encounter this problem.

S

Stefan Gentz

Correct answer

Community Manager

On investigating this further with RoboHelp 2022.3., I can confirm that there is a bug related to bookmark handling in specific scenarios.

I have tested this scenario:

<p>Bookmark: <a id="ThisIsBookmark1"></a></p>
<p>Bookmark: <a id="ThisIsBookmark2"></a>.</p>
<p><a id="ThisIsBookmark3"></a></p>
<a id="ThisIsBookmark4"></a>

Resulting translation (here: German):

<p>Lesezeichen: </p>
<p>Lesezeichen: .</p>
<p><a id="ThisIsBookmark3"></a></p>
<a id="ThisIsBookmark4"></a>

As you can see, in the first two cases, the bookmark gets lost, and in the other two cases it remains.

This might help you as an intermediate workaround until the bug is fixed.

I have created a ticket for this, that you can track here: RH-12164.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Have you been in contact with the RH folks about this?

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

I don't have any experience with XLIFF at all, but are you sure that the bookmarks are supposed to be translated in the first place?

W

WoutJacobsAuthor

Inspiring

They don't, but they should at least be included in the export. If you import the translated XLIFF without bookmarks, all crossreferences to bookmarks are rendered dead in the translation project because the bookmarks don't exist there.