HHC 3004 in rhlc.exe compilation output

Question

I'm compiling a couple of projects using a batch script in which I invoke RHLC.EXE.A start page (startseite.htm) has the following mark up in it:...

...

...RHLC.EXE throws a warning:The HTML tag "?rh-placeholder type="header" ?" is not a valid HTML tag (it does not begin with an alphanumeric character).The error is not visible in RH9 itself (in the output window). Could be that the HTMLHELP Preprocessor 9.0.1.262 isremoving this tag?--ChristophLet me add another thought since noone has answered yet: is it a good idea at all to use rhlc.exe to compile CHMs in batch mode? The speedup advantage is significant that's for sure (over point and click), but can I catch conditional build tags at all with this method? Or can I also invoke the preprocessor and pass it conditional build DEFINES?

Jared Hess · Accepted Answer

I don't know why you're getting this specific error message in the command line but not within RH. In my opinion, anything that succeeds fine in normal RH, but doesn't succeed in the RH command line should be considered a bug and should be communicated to RH technical support.

If I remember right, the RH 9 command line can run into issues the more complex your help project becomes. For example, merged .chm files. They build fine, but clicking on links opens up topics in new windows. Thankfully this issue appears to be fixed in RH 2015.

There are other issues with the command line approach too. Like if you have an advanced CSS style in your project that adds in images before the text as part of the style (like a note icon in a note style), your style doesn't get the image. I wish the rhcl.exe were much more reliable. I have a large batch file that generates our .chm files daily, but I can't use it because of this CSS issue. (To be fair, this might be fixed in the latest RH 2015 patch, but I haven't been able to test it yet).

As far as conditional build tags go, if I remember right, they seem to work fine in RH 9.

Krischu · Answer

Thanks, Jared. This is (partially) good news. After having posted it came to me that rhlc.exe ought to know about (nearly) everything since it is using the .xpj file for building. Thus all settings for the single source projects would be set.

I will give RH11 (and RH12) a try whether they do it right, but most of our seats are RH9 and "spoiling" a project by running it through a newer version would prevent others from reusing it. So I could probably do it just in some kind of testbench.

Thanks anyway.

--

Christoph

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