Context-sensitive help links after upgrade

Please see RH-10604 | Tracker (adobe.com)

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

So it seems. I'm not sure how or why topic.htm gets created, but it is not specified anywhere in the preset options that I can find. 

The application I'm documenting has two help options. The user can select "Help for this page" and they will get a context-sensitive topic that is mapped to the current screen using the topic.htm#t= reference. The user's other option is to select "Help Index" [terrible name, I didn't choose it], which opens the full help site and displays the starting page I specified in the preset (call it productname.htm).

I think we have determined that my context-sensitive references should still work for Responsive HTML help, but they will need to change when I move to Frameless. I really appreciate all the helpful discussion on this question. Thank you so much for your time and research!

I've just seen @Amebr response. So what you are saying is the preset can have any start page name but CSH calls have to substitute topic.hm for it. Correct?

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

I set up a new Indigo skin that has no reference to index.htm or topic.htm, as expected as that is defined in preset. Presets by default use index.htm. That's why I have said to Amber that I am not following.

I think if you change topic.htm in your preset to index.htm it would use that so the path would be as I describe. However, it doesn't matter what it is as long as you amend the call to the start page defined in the preset. Mickey_Mouse.htm is fine. All that matters is the path in the call uses the same start page as the preset.

Pending Amber's comments I think nothing needs to change when you go to 2020 responsive but you will need to change for frameless.

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

What Amber is saying is exactly what I'm experiencing. I thought maybe this project was set up wrong, but apparently this is the expected behavior with the Indigo layout 🙂 I get the same result (topic.html file) when creating Responsive HTML output using the Indigo skin with RH 2020.

In the preset, I specify the starting page as (let's say) productname.htm and when the output is generated, I get that file plus another file called topic.htm. I can't read the code well enough to tell you how these files work, but it seems that topic.htm has a reference to productname.htm.

From what Amber is saying, I think I might be able to leave my context-sensitive references as they are if I need to produce Responsive output using RH 2020.

@Amebr I'm not following you. The start page is defined in the preset, not the skin. Where are you seeing topic.htm being used?

Using 2019 I added an Indigo skin generated an output with index.htm as the start page. The output shows index.htm in URL.

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

As i said, Indigo in RH2019 works completely differently to every other help output and doesn't follow Peter's instructions for URL help calls. Instead of using the Start Page as every other skin does, it uses some auto-generated file called topic.htm.  I'm not currently at a computer with RH2020 so I can't check if this behaviour is the same in a RH2020 generated project.

If it works the same way in RH2020, then I think you wouldn't have to change your help call when you upgrade to a RH2020 responsive output. In this scenario you'd only have to change the help call when you decide to move to Frameless,.

If it doesn't work the same way as Rh2019, you will have to change the help call when you upgrade. In this scenario you'd have to change your help call twice - once to the format for Responsive, and again when you move to Frameless.

OK, I see what you are saying. I appreciate the time you've taken already to explain this to me, so I'm going to spare you a long explanation of what seems to be going on with this project, but let's just say that in short, topic.htm does seem to be my start page. 

So, that being the case, will my context-sensitive references in this form:

/path/topic.htm#t=topicfile.htm

still work in Responsive help generated with RH 2020?

And when I move on to the Frameless layout, will they all have to be edited to remove the reference to the start page?

/path/topicfile.htm

Your current call is /path/topic.htm#t=topicfile.htm. There are two files there, topic.htm and topicfile.htm. What is the file name for your start page? I'm guessing it is topic.htm which would make it the same as index.htm on my page.

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

Right. I remember reading that on your site 🙂

Currently with our Responsive HTML/Indigo setup, the context-sensitive links open with the full TOC and I would want them to behave the same way. So with RH 2020, do I need to change the reference from topic.htm#t to index.htm#t (or instead of index.htm, the actual name of the start page)?

And in a Frameless layout, can I omit the index.htm#t= part and just use the full path and still get the TOC?

For example, suppose the current reference is /help/admin/topic.htm#t=config/add_user.htm and the start page is mystartpage.htm (rather than index.htm). The /help/admin/ path is determined by where the help files are stored on the server as part of the software platform; I can't change this. The /config/ subfolder reflects how the help output is organized for my project.

Once I upgrade to RH 2020, if I want to produce Responsive help, I think the reference would need to change to

/help/admin/mystartpage.htm#t=config/add_user.htm

And if I want to produce Frameless help, the reference would need to change again to the unique URL:

/help/admin/config/add_user.htm

Is that correct? I really appreciate your patience in answering these questions!