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jamesm0671
Known Participant
November 12, 2006
Question

SVGs in RoboHelp using work-around for EOLAS

  • November 12, 2006
  • 1 reply
  • 706 views
Hello,

Recently, I posted some questions up on the SVG Developers forum, regarding the embedding of SVGs into (RoboHelp X5 created) HTML pages.

To be legally compliant, I guess all objects to be embedded (e.g. SVGs) will now have to be called into the HTML page (using JavaScript - e.g. Document Write) versus using the old "EMBED" method.

With that said, here is my question?

Has Adobe created a work-around or patch that will take care of this "EMBED" issue automatically?

Or, is there a way to run this process (such as through the GUI), each time an SVG is to be inserted into a RoboHelp HTML page?

I am creating a large Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) and the requirement is to use interactive SVGs. The customer wants to be able to click on each SVG - without having to first "Click here to activate this control" (embed issue). The requirement is also to make this SVG rich IETM viewable in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) as well as Internet Explorer 7 (IE7).

Are there any updates to RoboHelp, that will address this EOLAS issue? If not, then will it be addressed in the next version of RoboHelp? I thought I had read that Adobe was updating Dreamweaver 8, to address the EOLAS issue. I hope that the same holds true for RoboHelp X5.

Thanks in advance for any answers.

Regards,

Jim
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    RoboWizard
    RoboWizard
    Inspiring
    November 12, 2006
    Hi Jim

    I suppose I should preface what I'm about to say with the simple fact that I know how to say "SVG" and that's about it. If I'm understanding you correctly, a SVG is a scalable vector graphic? I've never used these, but somehow always assumed they were like .GIF, .JPG or other image formats and we inserted them as we do images. The fact you mention "EMBED" makes me think that perhaps they must be inserted like Captivate movies are.

    I'm totally lost as far as your mention of something called EOLAS? When I first saw the post, I figured EOLAS was someone you were replying to. What is it? Looks like an acronym for something.

    Cheers... Rick
    J
    jamesm0671Author
    Known Participant
    November 14, 2006


    Hello Rick,

    You can get more information of the XML based Scalable Vector Graphic or SVG at:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SVG

    http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/

    http://www.adobe.com/svg


    EOLAS refers (as I understand it) basically to a one man company that patented the technology for embedding plugins within browsers. Anyway, EOLAS filed suit for patent infringement and now IE (as of this year) has changed their browser in response. What this means for you and me, is that we can not embed Flash, SVGs and other plugins into an HTML page and have it be interactive from the start. There is now a "Click here to activate this control". So, I had to find a work-around to allow a RoboHelp based IETM or Interactive Electronic Technical Manual, to be fully functional from the start. Who wants to click on an SVG twice to see roll over effects and pop-up menus. I know my clients don't. I hear that Dreamweaver has been updated to 8.02 to compensate to the new changes to Internet Explorer. It looks like the Adobe folks have made applicable updates to some of the other Adobe/Macromedia products too. I hope that they will incorporate a patch/update to RoboHelp X5 (or X6?) to deal with this issue. As it stands now, to bypass this issue, I am doing the following:

    1. Create and store SVG (i.e Intro.svg) in graphics folder.
    2. Create JavaScript (i.e. Intro.js) file with same name with two lines of code:

    // Intro.js
    document.write('<embed src="Intro.svg">')

    3. Put JavaScript code into destination RoboHelp HTML page as shown below:

    <!-- HTML File -->
    <html>
    <body leftmargin=0 topmargin=0 scroll=no>
    <script src="Intro.js"></script>
    </body>
    </html>


    That's what I use for now and it eliminates the "Click here to activate this control" message and avoids using the "EMBED" tag in the destination HTML page.

    I am dealing with several hundred SVGs and will now create a JavaScript for each file, unless of course, someone is nice enough to show a JavaScript novice like myself, how to create a JavaScript file (an array??) that can store all the appropriate variables, in a single JS file. It is not a simple matter though as the SVGs are spread out in different folders (on this inherited project). My solution is time consuming, but simple enough and effective. I do appreciate any way in which I can optimize the JavaScripts for RoboHelp (based on my scenario).

    Finally, I still do not know if web developers are still allowed (legally) to use the "EMBED" tag, when creating HTML pages or not (even if they have to "Click here to activate this control". But, I am playing it safe by writing in my SVGs via an external JavaScript file.

    If anyone can give me some insight on the legalities of the "EMBED" (also "APPLET" and "OBJECT") tag, then I would be very appreciative. It would seem that we all need to make the changes, else why is Microsoft (makers of a web browser) and Adobe (makers of products that create web pages) changing their applications around this EOLAS agreement.

    I wonder also if this issue extends to all browsers in general (i.e. Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Sea Monkey, Safari) or only to Internet Explorer (IE).

    Thanks for any insights.

    Jim
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