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Participating Frequently
December 14, 2023
Question

Link Folder RH project, where some FM cross-reference are not linking in RH

  • December 14, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 2151 views

Hello, I'm using FM 17.0.3.546 and RH 2022.3.93

 

I'm having an issue with some of my FM cross-reference not linking in RH.

When:

  • in FM, I cross-reference a section or sub-section within the same chapter, the link is made in RH—I click the link in the generated output and it jumps to the correct section.
  • in FM, I cross-reference a section in another chapter, the link doesn't get created in RH—I click the link in the generated output and it doesn't jump to the section. 

 

This is how I generated my output:

In FM, my .book contains 10 chapters, and in RH, I created a new projects, and used Link Folder to link my project. This works fine. 

In RH, Author>Contents: I set up my FM link settings to start new topic from style (right-click link .fm file, click Edit Settings>General>Start new topic from style, and point to my FM paragraph tags I want topics for). This works great!

In RH, Author>Contents: I created the topics (right-click link .fm file, click Create Topics). This works great!

In Rh, Author>Table of Contents: I created a new Table of Contents, type BOOK_TOC, then build my Toc. Still good so far. 

In RH, Output>Output Presets: I created a new preset Responsive HTML5 (I'm using template Charcoal_Grey for the layout). 

In RH, Output>Output Preset: I generated the output and viewed it. It works beautifully. Except for the cross-references.

 

Any feedback would be helpful. Thanks!

Cindy

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    3 replies

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2023

    It seems to be even more important on the FM end of things - once I shortened up the absolute path to my FM content on my network server, the busted xrefs in the resulting RH project stopped happening. It really got my interest when links on the same page would have some working and others that didn't.

    Participating Frequently
    December 15, 2023

    Thank you Amerb & Jeff_Coatsworth.

    I will test this theory out. FM & RH being so sensitive, it's giving me anxiety just thinking how I will test it out, but I will do this and get back. 

    Not sure who marked both your answers "correct" before I got a chance to test it out, but I will be back on this thread to confirm the suggestions. 🙂

     

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 15, 2023

    "Not sure who marked both your answers "correct" before I got a chance to test it out..." - Let's fix that - there's been some phantom "correct" marking going on in the forums lately. 

    Community Expert
    December 14, 2023

    The path relates to the entire file system path, not just the path within the project. So for example if you keep your projects in your Documents folder in Windows, this can easily hit the character limit as the path is actually something like:

     

    c:\User\jonathan.citizen\Documents\My Robohelp Projects\My_long_project_name\folder1\folder2\my_long_topic_name_as_well.htm

     

    And it gets worse if that location is mapped to a cloud drive, which is often the case with corporate computers these days.

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 14, 2023

    Check the length of the path+filenames for both your source FM files and the RH project location - shorter is good - I found there's an invisible limit to the absolute path+filename # of characters that will break xrefs coming from the FM content. 

    Participating Frequently
    December 14, 2023

    I believe what you're saying is true, shorter is always better. I don't think that's the issue though. 

     

    Topics that cross-reference to another topic inside the same folder work great.
    Topics that cross-reference to a topic in another folder get broken. 

     

    In the example here:

    • under folder Ch6_Transfer_Module, topic "Agency_List" can cross-reference topic "Contact_List"—link intact.
    • under folder Ch6_Transfer_Module, topic "Agency_List" cannot cross-references a topic under folder Ch7_ListsModule, let's say topic "Changing_Display_Characteristics" —the link breaks.