Skip to main content
F
Freespirit-ST
Known Participant
December 23, 2014
Question

"CHM not displaying according to stylesheet"

  • December 23, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 2214 views


I have been using RoboHelp - currently RoboHelp 11 - for many years now. For some unknown reason, suddenly now my CHM files are displaying NOT according to my CSS stylesheet, which has not changed recently.  Fonts and styles are completely different than CSS specifications, and my images are not getting pulled into the CHM output (just showing placeholders).  I checked the stylesheet, and it still has the same font as we've had, which is Arial - the CHM is showing Times New Roman..


I am running Windows 7 Professional, by the way, with my RoboHelp 11..

Also the CHM is showing up correctly for the other users here.  SO I'm suspecting there's something corrupted in my environment locally, my local install.  Could it be the HH.EXE that's corrupt?  Which source file should I look for, and I'm assuming it's within my Adobe > RoboHelp directory.


I would appreciate any help for where I should look and ideas about what I should do.

Also, note that my WebHelp output is fine.  And HTML Help is our secondary output.  (The WebHelp is "attached" to the system.

Thanks so much.

Susan

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
December 23, 2014

Hi there

The HH.EXE used to display the CHM file relies on elements of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Because of that, I'd suspect that possibly IE is causing the issue. I think I'd begin by examining everything related to IE from the browser configuration perspective. For example, if you open IE and open the Internet Options, look at the Advanced tab. If you scroll to the Multimedia section, is the option for "Show Pictures" selected or not? If not, pictures don't appear in the CHM file.

Then look at the General tab. Click the Accessibility button. Do you perhaps have your own CSS listed that might be overriding things? If so, that can also apply to CHM files.

Cheers... Rick

F
Freespirit-STAuthor
Known Participant
December 23, 2014

Thanks for your reply.  I did check, but all seemed OK.  And I have not changed any IE settings recently.

In my Internet Options, the "Show pictures" option is selected (checked).  And there is no global style sheet for Format documents using my style sheet, so no selected.

This is a new issue, so I've been able to generate CHMs that displayed correctly - all images, with CSS-specified styles - as recently as last week.  So, the display problem happens to CHMs that were generated months ago, with the same problem..  Thus I suspect it is perhaps a corrupt HH.EXE - assuming that is the EXE that displays for Windows 7.

Since HH.EXE is a Microsoft product, I think I may need to download a copy, to see if what I currently have is corrupted.

I welcome any other ideas and places to check.  The Microsoft MSDN site  was not very helpful. Thanks, Rick!

Susan

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
December 23, 2014

Hi Susan

The reason I don't suspect a corrupt HH.EXE is because you report that some CHM files display fine and it only seems to happen with some others. I might think that if your HH.EXE has become corrupted, all CHM files would exhibit the same behavior.

Although, we now live in sort of a "split" world. What I mean is that we now have 64 bit operating systems. And that means we have two versions of HH.EXE. One version that runs on 32 bit systems and another that runs on 64 bit systems. In earlier years, Adobe was slow about releasing a 64 bit version of Flash. And that was a problem for CHM files that needed to present flash content and that were running via the 64 bit HH.EXE.

If I were in your shoes, I'd perform a small experiment to see if running the CHM file using each version of HH.EXE (32 bit as well as 64 bit) is causing the issue.

You might also want to investigate MJ's diagnostics by clicking the link below:

Click here to view

Cheers... Rick

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices