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gevansmd
Participant
May 6, 2009
Question

Converting .hpj WinHelp to HTMLHelp never complets

I have tried several times to convert my existing .hpj file to HTMLHelp, using RH7 and the demo for RH8.  The result is the same.  RH begins the conversion and gets part way through and then stops without a warning or error.  The result is a partially converted project with many empty folders.  Thinking it is still running but slowly, I've let it run for hours with no difference.

If I convert the .hlp file, the project completes but that conversion has no option to use external style sheets and the resulting pages are all in Times New Roman instead of Arial.  I saw where that's a problem with the css reference in the file being type= with nothing following it.  I have 4000+ files, I have no intention of editing all of them.

Greg

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    6 replies

    Anonymous
    September 16, 2010

    here is what I'm dealing with...

    Has Adobe responded to this bug?

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    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    September 16, 2010

    What bug are you referring too?

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    gevansmdAuthor
    Participant
    May 28, 2009

    I contacted Adobe support and was told I had to be an administrator to do the conversion I wanted to do.  I was doubtful since it does convert part of the project, just never completes the job.  I tried it at home using Vista's Run as Administrator option and sure enough, the job completed.

    ???

    Why in the world is that necessary?

    But having completed the conversion, I still found one problem.  Leading spaces in plain text formatting were deleted in the final .htm converted files.  Why didn't it use &nbsp to keep my formatting as I wanted it?  It's not a horrific problem, only 479 out of 4000+ files are potentially affected and probably only 25% of those will have to manually edited in Robohelp.

    Is there an option I missed when I converted the old project?

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    RoboWizard
    RoboWizard
    Inspiring
    May 6, 2009

    Hi Greg

    In my view it's a good thing to move to RoboHelp HTML.

    You said:

    If I convert the .hlp file, the project completes but that conversion has no option to use external style sheets and the resulting pages are all in Times New Roman instead of Arial.  I saw where that's a problem with the css reference in the file being type= with nothing following it.  I have 4000+ files, I have no intention of editing all of them.

    There should be no need to edit 4,000 topic pages. As I suspect you are reasonably new to the world of RoboHelp HTML, here is how you are able to easily associate the style sheet to all topics.

    Open the Topic List pod (View > Pods > Topic List)

    From there, select all topics in the pod via pressing Ctrl+A. Then right-click and display Properties. You should be able to associate the desired style sheet that way.

    In RoboHelp 8 there is a new option in the Single Source Layout properties that allows you to override whatever Style Sheets are in use with a single style sheet. I'm not sure how well it works as I've not really put that particular feature through its paces. But I'd expect things to work if you tried it.

    Cheers... Rick

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    Amebr-ke0mH4
    Inspiring
    May 7, 2009

    Hi Rick,

    Just so you know, RH8 HTML view seems to "correct" the fact that type in the stylesheet tag is actually blank, and this isn't corrected by re-applying the stylesheet or master page.

    So open a topic in a text editor and ensure the stylesheet is like this:

    <link rel="StyleSheet" href="style.css" type="" />

    If you open that topic in RH8 and view the HTML, it displays as:

    <link rel="StyleSheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" />

    Re-opening the topic in a text editor will confirm that type is still actually blank.

    This causes the text to display without the css styles applied in the compiled file. The only way I found to correct it was to use a search and replace tool to correct the blank type.

    Interestingly, not all my topics displayed incorrectly. I've just had another look and the topics that get the blank type seem to be the ones which have a capital REL and HREF; none of the references in RH6 or 7 have the type element in that tag at all. (These are files that have been through RH since RH9 or so, so lots of legacy coding and potential upgrade glitches.) Looks like the conversion process might not cope with capitalisation. I'll submit this to Adobe in the bug form.

    Amber

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