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M
MIPS_John
Participant
February 22, 2012
Question

Unused images compiled into CHM

  • February 22, 2012
  • 3 replies
  • 2486 views

When using conditional build tags in RoboHelp to exclude topics in a generated CHM file, the images used in these topics are compiled anyway.

So, the HTML files are not integrated (using the build tags), the images used in these HTML files are ...

In my case:

I want to generate a separate CHM file which contains only a very small subset of the full manual (API specifications for third party vendors) .

This CHM only contains about 10 HTML files, but still amount to 13MB because all images from the entire manual are compiled into the CHM.

How can this be avoided ?

Many thanks !

John Victor

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    L
    limacon
    Known Participant
    March 27, 2014

    Hi John,

    Did you solve the problem?

    I have the same one...

    M
    MIPS_JohnAuthor
    Participant
    March 27, 2014

    I switched to Madcap Flare

    L
    limacon
    Known Participant
    March 27, 2014

    I have just installed MadCap Flare 10, imported my RoboHelp project and generated 3 CHM files with different conditional text tags.

    Sizes of these CHM files are identical and they are a little bit larger than CHM generated by Robohelp

    The problem with images still resist...

    All images in my project occupy 1.2 Mb of disk space and CHM is 1.4 Mb, but not all of these images are used for all output targets.

    So, how did you solve this problem by moving to MadCap Flare?

    Thanks in advance for your answer!

    A
    Community Expert
    AmebrCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 23, 2012

    Are you perhaps applying build tag in the Table of Contents pod, rather than on the topic itself? I believe this method will only remove the topic from the TOC and the topic  remains in the compiled chm. This would explain why the chm file size remains large.

    Captiv8r
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    February 23, 2012

    Excellent suggestion, Amebr!

    Will we be seeing you at Writer's UA this year?

    Cheers... Rick

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    M
    MIPS_JohnAuthor
    Participant
    February 23, 2012

    @ amebr: the CBT's are applied on topic level.   This is confirmed by the fact that the CHM does not contain the excluded HTML file, but does contain its referred images.

    @Anjaneai: many thanks for the tip.  I checked the contents of the CHM with HTML Help Studio and my assumptions were confirmed. Would like to add a screenshot, but getting the following forum error "An error occurred while trying to submit your post. Please try again."

    Anjaneai_Srivastava
    Adobe Employee
    Anjaneai_Srivastava
    Adobe Employee
    February 22, 2012

    Hello John,

    So, as per my undertsanding, your CHM output is not displaying images or topics that were excluded via CBT, but the Compilation does include those images, hence they are adding to the size of the CHM output. Correct?

    Seems to be an intresting scenario. As a test, Can you rename the CHM output, located inside the ProjectsDirectory/!SSL!/ . i.e (filename.chm to filename.zip) and then extract the zip file, it would uncompress the contents and display you all it holds, see, if you find those excluded topics or any graphics that were contained in those excluded topics?

    Thanks,

    Anjaneai

    M
    MIPS_JohnAuthor
    Participant
    February 22, 2012

    Hello Anjaneai

    I am not sure of I explained the problem well.  An example:

    Project contains:

    TopicA: without images

    TopicB: with images

    Using conditional build tags, TopicB is excluded from the output.  So the CHM only contains TopicA (the one without images).

    However, given the size of the CHM, you can see that the images are still included.

    It seems that RoboHelp (v9) does not check whether images refer to topics that are excluded from the output.

    John

    Anjaneai_Srivastava
    Adobe Employee
    Anjaneai_Srivastava
    Adobe Employee
    February 22, 2012

    Hello John,

    I just now created a Project with the exact scenario that you explained.

    I used the HTML Help Studio (View--Pods--Toolbox), to check the contents of the CHM  -- CHM only contains TopicA (the one without images).

    When you launch this utility and open you CHM it would show all the contnets inside it that were used during compilation process.

    In the same scenario, i checked it was not displaying the Graphics from Topic B, neither the Topic B itself. So in your case, the 13 MB size could have been because of some other objects, you can determine that too, with HTML help Studio.

    hope it helps.

    Thanks,

    Anjaneai

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