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R
RoboFan
Inspiring
August 25, 2006
Answered

RoboHelp HTML Tools menu inactive for projects under RoboSource Control

  • August 25, 2006
  • 3 replies
  • 805 views
I just upgraded our Help projects from X3 to X5 and installed (and began using for the first time) RoboSource Control. The problem is that when I open a help project that's under RSC in RoboHelp HTML, the "Tools" menu is inactive - really, it's unavailable. If I hold the cursor over "Tools", it just flickers and doesn't even produce the drop-down menu. I tried opening a backup copy (so it isn't under RSC) of one of the projects and the "Tools" menu works just fine. The sample projects work just fine too. This problem occurs on both our dedicated RSC server and my client machine.

It looks like this is an RSC problem. Note that I've installed all the latest updates (5.02) on both the server and my client machine.

Thoughts?
This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer RoboFan
Help projects MUST be added to a RoboSource Control database from within RoboHelp HTML. Do NOT add a help project to a RoboSource Control database with the ADD FOLDERS... option in RoboSource Control Explorer.

We have 12 help projects. Each help project has its own RoboSource Control database. Each help project was added to its database using the ADD FOLDERS... option in RoboSource Control Explorer. Earlier today I discovered that some of the topics in one particular database were corrupt so I rebuilt the database using the ADD TO VERSION CONTROL... option in RoboHelp HTML. It successfully created and when I opened the help project in RoboHelp HTML, the "Tools" menu suddenly worked. I have since rebuilt another database using RoboHelp HTML and I'm 2 for 2. I'll update this post if I run into any other issues.

3 replies

EileenPalsson
EileenPalsson
Inspiring
March 18, 2008
Thank you for your ideas. The master/merge solution you mentioned is one we use for other projects. It is not feasible for these particular two projects, for various reasons.

So I'm hoping someone else will be able to tell me how to get the Tools menu to appear. As I said, otherwise what we're doing works fine -- it's just the Tools menu we're having trouble with. I'm thinking there's some under-the-hood tweaking that can be done to wake it up -- an INI file setting or something?
EileenPalsson
EileenPalsson
Inspiring
March 17, 2008
I wonder why RSC has "Add Folders" if that option causes problems in RoboHelp?!

I am having the problem with the Tools menu described above. And after spending hours playing around with it and trying different solutions (and performing numerous fruitless searches in the "RoboHelp for HTML" forum), I find this and discover that the problem is probably due to the fact that I added project files to RSC using the "Add Files" commend in RSC.

But I had to add those files that way. My team is single-sourcing two help projects that share about 80% of the same topics. At first we used the same project files for the two projects, marking up the topics using conditional build tags. But we couldn't adjust the TOC or Index. We also had trouble with the title and file name of the compiled help (which are saved in the HHP file and not just in the single source layouts).

So my solution was to create separate project files based on the original ones. I duplicated all of the ProjectName.* files and adjusted them in Notepad. Then I added them using RSC's Add Files command. When I open the "new" project, everything works great, EXCEPT the Tools menu that doesn't appear.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can solve this problem? I'd be grateful!
R
RoboFanAuthor
Inspiring
March 17, 2008
I don't have any suggestions for getting the "Tools" menu in RH to appear other than to make all changes in RH (as opposed to RSC). While the RSC UI isn't very useful for maintaining RH files, I do use it to lock down (in a version controlled database separate from our RH projects) a small set of MS Word docs that we produce as PDFs. The Word docs serve as the source files for our PDFs and I use the RSC UI to check in/out files and to review previous versions.

You mentioned that you have two help systems and they share about 80% of the same topics. Have you considered splitting out your help systems into multiple projects and then merging the projects into master projects?

For example, suppose that both of your help systems contain 100 topics. Create help project A to contain the 80 topics used by both help systems. Create help project B to hold the other 20 unique topics. Create help project C to hold another 20 unique topics. Create a master help project Y, which is essentially empty, and then merge help project A and B in it. Create a master help project Z, and then merge help project A and C in it. Under this solution, you'll only have to maintain one set of the shared files.

R
RoboFanAuthorCorrect answer
Inspiring
September 1, 2006
Help projects MUST be added to a RoboSource Control database from within RoboHelp HTML. Do NOT add a help project to a RoboSource Control database with the ADD FOLDERS... option in RoboSource Control Explorer.

We have 12 help projects. Each help project has its own RoboSource Control database. Each help project was added to its database using the ADD FOLDERS... option in RoboSource Control Explorer. Earlier today I discovered that some of the topics in one particular database were corrupt so I rebuilt the database using the ADD TO VERSION CONTROL... option in RoboHelp HTML. It successfully created and when I opened the help project in RoboHelp HTML, the "Tools" menu suddenly worked. I have since rebuilt another database using RoboHelp HTML and I'm 2 for 2. I'll update this post if I run into any other issues.
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