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A
Anonymous
February 1, 2012
Answered

RoboHelp 9 crashes during the publish of a project

  • February 1, 2012
  • 3 replies
  • 3523 views

Greetings friends,

I am in a serious bind. I have a project that was created in Robohelp 9. I started encountering crashes on the evening of Jan 30th when attempting to publish the project.

I have been working in this same project without issue for 3 months without issue. I suspect the issue is related to some topics that were updated or created on that day.

Here is what I have tried:

1. I am able to successfully publish other projects

2. I was able publish the project in question earlier in the day. From modified times, I can deduce the batch of topics that may be involved.

The problem is there are 32 topics.

3. I have evaluated each of the 32 topics, seeing an earlier thread that referenced potential issues with tables. I did find 2 topics where the table looked a bit odd. I edited the properties on the tables and saved the topics. The issue persisted.

4. For grins, I checked the properties on the tables in each topic to be sure they matched the format in known-good topics.

5. I have tried renaming the project's .cpd file - based on other posts- the same issue occurs.

6. The project is pretty good size, so recreating it is NOT an option.

So I am stuck!

I have some questions to try to resolve this:

1. I noted in another thread that a user with a similar issue was able to publish via command line. Any suggestions on the string to use?

2. Is there a way to test this project by removing the suspect topics, then readding them one-at-a-time - aside from manually re-creating the topic in RH, then copy/paste from the original?

Any suggestions on how to achieve this goal?

3. Are there any debugging/compiling tools available to help troubleshoot this type of error? This seems like a fairly common error where topic formatting can cause trouble. It would SEEM logical that a tool would exist.

I thank you all in advance for your consideration on this!

Thanks again.

Eric Buterbaugh

Newforma, Inc.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer

Hold on - you seem to say in post #17 that the project is living on the T:\ drive of the server. Is that true? If so, that's a big no-no too.


Hi Jeff,

My apologies for not looking more closely at this but I think your suggestions have pointed me in the right direction.

I am checking the publish settings and something there is not right. I am going to compare the settings to a “known-good” project and I may need to discuss this with our IT Admin. Pretty odd that the settings could change.

I’ll post an update once I have more info.

Thanks again!

Eric

=========================================================================

Update! -2/1/12 7:33 p.m.

Publish works!

After a close comparison between a working project and the broken project, I noted the publish settings differed. The Publish settings in the WebHelp Pro Properties were not correct. It is still unclear how this could have changed - I'll take this up with our Admin to determine what happened on Monday afternoon that could have affected this.

Generally speaking, could an update to the client or the server be responsible for this?

Many Thanks Peter, Willam, Jeff, Rick, et al....

Message was edited by: EricButer

3 replies

A
Anonymous
February 1, 2012

One other helpful piece of info: at the end of the Generate Process, I click View to see the result. The web browser opens to that resource and I can see the online help. Here is the address from the browser:

file:///T:/Info_Exchange_Version9/Newforma_Info_Exchange_Help.htm

The T:/ is to a local file server and is easily accessible via Windows Explorer. I have verified today that I still have read/write/modify rights to the share and the project folder and have successfully published 2 other projects to that same parent folder (they have a unique folder under t:/).

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
February 1, 2012

Hi there

I think this is the first mention we've seen of "WebHelp Pro".

So the question here is: Are you publishing to the RoboHelp Server?

Do you know what I'm referring to when asking this question?

Cheers... Rick

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A
Anonymous
February 1, 2012

Hey Rick,

I follow you. In a couple of minutes, I will send an image of the publish settings.

A
Anonymous
February 1, 2012

Here is the screenshot of the completion of the Generate process. As you will note, the dialog box prompts to move forward with the Publish process. The crash occurs almost instantly after I click to publish. If I click Done, the process completes gracefully.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 1, 2012

Eric

Just picking up on your second Point 2.

Create a tag called Test.

Apply it to all 32 topics.

Publish an output that has a build tag that excludes anything with the Test tag.

Assuming that generates, remove the tag from a batch of topics at a time, or even one at a time.

Should narrow it down.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Willam van Weelden
Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
February 1, 2012

Hi,

In addition to Peter's advice, try to run the W3C validation in your project. Check for any errors. Some errors choke the RH generation and it can help you to quickly identify whether there are any problems with the HTML syntax in specific topics.

Greet,

Willam

A
Anonymous
February 1, 2012

Greetings Willam,

Good to chat with you again.

Thank you for the suggestion for the W3C Validator. I located it here: http://validator.w3.org/check

I am still in the process of running it on all the suspect topics, but I did find this in one of the topics. This seems to me to be just the type of issue that could cause this, though I am disappointed that RoboHelp does not offer any better error-handling around this.

I’ll continue testing according to your suggestion and will post my results.

Cheers,

Eric

Validation Output: 2 Errors

1. Line 69, Column 19: document type does not allow element "ul" here; assuming missing "li" start-tag

1. Line 79, Column 7: end tag for "li" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified

</ul>

✉<http://validator.w3.org/feedback.html?uri=;errmsg_id=70#errormsg>

You may have neglected to close an element, or perhaps you meant to "self-close" an element, that is, ending it with "/>" instead of ">".

1. Line 69, Column 4: start tag was here

<ul type="disc"

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