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Anonymous
August 1, 2006
Question

Make Print Documentation my primary layout?

  • August 1, 2006
  • 1 reply
  • 420 views
Hello fellow RH users,

At my company, I've been assigned to write printed documentation with RoboHelp. No, I am not writing any online documentation because the product we create doesn't work with .CHM files. Yes, I know I'm not using RoboHelp for what it was intended, but that wasn't my decision to make.

Now, what I'm wondering is, can I make Printed Documentation as my primary layout? It seems that Microsoft HTML Help is the default primary layout. However, this is no good as far as I'm concerned, because I can't do anything with a .CHM file. My only interest in using RH is to make a paper book. So, I would like to make printed documentation my primary layout, but my menu won't let me choose this.

Why is this? Is there any way I can change this?
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1 reply

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
August 1, 2006
Hi ebradsimmons

Although I cannot explain why the RoboHelp developers never built in the ability to define Printed Documentation as your primary layout, I might be able to assist with getting things set up for you.

1. Examine the properties for any topic.
2. Click the File tab.
3. Click the Open Folder button. (This should open Windows Explorer to the right general location)
4. Switch back to RoboHelp and dismiss the properties dialog.
5. Close RoboHelp HTML.
6. Locate a file in your project location named ProjectName.XML.
7. Edit this file using Windows Notepad
8. Inside the file you should see an area labeled <primarylayout>. There will be two tags and they might look like this:
<primarylayout>Microsoft HTML Help</primarylayout>
9. Change these so they now look like this:
<primarylayout>Printed Documentation</primarylayout>
10. Close and save the file.
11. Restart RoboHelp HTML.

I'm not fully sure of the ramifications of doing this. In my little test, RoboHelp HTML DID manage to open and the Primary layout was indeed set for Printed documentation. But beyond that, it's a crap shoot as to whether it will cause RoboHelp HTML to gag at some point down the road. Hopefully it will simply do what you need.

Sincerely... Rick
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