Blank pages in compiled help

Report · Apr 24, 2008

I am using RH 7 trial version. When I compile my help file to a chm I have 4 pages which come out blank when I click on the topic or any links to it. Within robohelp I can see these pages both design, HTML and preview with all the content there as I would expect. I cannot see how these files differ to any of the others. Any ideas?

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Hi, Jules, and welcome,

If the .chm file is stored on a network drive, you need to move it to your local drive or else apply the registry changes described in this article:

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/chm_mspatch/896358.htm

The easiest way to make these registry changes is with HHReg, a free tool available from this address:

http://www.ec-software.com/products_hhreg.html

Pete

Report · Apr 24, 2008

It's stored on my hard drive (I have 2 hard drives in my pc - would that make a difference?) Also, it is only on 4 out of >100 pages this happens on.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Also , just to be clear, it is not an error page I get, the page is completely blank. Thanks for taking the time to reply to me.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Do you have a lot of images, links or drop downs in these topics. This can effect the page's load times.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

No. One of the pages has many links on it but the others don't. They are no different in format to all the others which have come out ok. The pages are not taking time to load they are simply blank. The only way I can get around it is to delete the topic and begin the process again. This is a pain since all the links to that page from other topics also get deleted which means I have to go back and fix them all.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

And were these topics all created in the same way? Look in the truecode and see if it is has anything untoward in it.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Also, if I delete the content from the page except say for the page title and then recompile the page still comes out blank so it would seem that it has nothing to do with the content

Report · Apr 24, 2008

here's a (probably) dumb question - are there conditional build tags on the topic content that might exclude it from the chm?

Report · Apr 24, 2008

What about the truecode? My logic is that there may be some script in the <head> section that is causing the problem. How were these topics created originally?

Report · Apr 24, 2008

All topics were created in the same way in a wiki. As I said, if (in the RH design WYSIWYG) I take out all the code and just enter a heading then it still compiles to the blank page.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

quote:

Originally posted by: JulesMcM
All topics were created in the same way in a wiki.

So you have imported these topics into RH? What format were the files in? Perhaps if you answered my other questions also.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

No conditional build tags

Report · Apr 24, 2008

By the truecode are you refering to the HTML code? I've looked closely at this and cannot see anything odd. The topics were imported from a wiki so HTML although I did have to do a bit of tweaking - not sure if that answers your question?

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Actually, the files were turned into a help file by a colleague using an earlier version of RH, I then imported the files into RH7

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Hi Julie

I think Colum suggested this already, but I'll reiterate. You might want to examine the page in HTML view. Specifically, what you want to look for are premature or extraneous Body or /Body tags. I've seen topics like this before that are mostly blank, yet have tons of code. And in those cases, I had odd tags or tags in odd or otherwise (unexpected by RoboHelp) places. This bowls a wobbly to RoboHelp sometimes and it can't understand or correctly interpret the code.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Apr 24, 2008

No extraneous Body or \Body tags in the code. The preview looks fine!?!?!? If I remove all the code and just put in a page title it still compiles with the blank page.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

If you create a new topic, then copy all the code between the BODY and /BODY tags from an errant topic into this new topic...what happens?

Good luck,
Leon

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Ok, I've tried this and it compiles ok, I can see the page there. I kinda suspected that it's not the code which is the problem but some setting or another which I am not aware of. Anyhow, looks like we've just bought a real version so I'll try again next week with that and hopefully it'll just go away. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks everyone for the help.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

There is no difference or limitation between the trial and full versions so it looks like the problem was in the body of the imported wiki pages. Leon's advice is the way to go if this happens again.

Report · Apr 24, 2008

I don't understand. I copied the code from the errant page onto the new topic, the new topic compiles ok but the original topic still comes up blank - but they both have the same code in - don't they? Are you saying the solution is to just do this - then I have to create all the links to the new topic again. Also I went through the entire procedure of importing the dodgy topic with a different file name and that also comes out fine!

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Hi there

If simply copying and pasting the code did the trick, my guess is that the only thing left is the file name of the topic possibly being the culprit.

Just thinking out loud... Rick

Report · Apr 24, 2008

Actually, Rick, anything in the HEAD section (errant meta tags, etc.).

JulesMcM, see if anything goofy appears when you compare the HEAD sections of the New and the Previous topics.

Good luck,
Leon