Can RH8 bog down on large projects? Can a .chm get "too big"?

Report · May 29, 2009

I'm thinking about implementing a gigantic RH8 project, the combination of a few existing projects. At what point might RH8 bog down on me -- when I have too many topics, to many bytes in the overall project, too many Flash files integrated, too many conditiional text tags, .... what? What sort of practical limits have others discovered? [Rh5 pooped out on me often, and RH7 works for me nicely with projects I call "medium sized".]

Similarly, can a .chm get too big? Too many graphics, too many topics, TOC too big, too many cross references ... I just making up examples but maybe there is a maximum practical size that someone has experience with?

Report · May 29, 2009

Hi there

I've had projects with literally thousands of topics. So I guess it depends on what you consider to be a large project. Some folks see perhaps 500 topics and think that's really large. So it's subjective.

The biggest issue I've seen in my own experience is that with many different topics you may see a slowdown when you attempt to create hyperlinks. But I think that report was from someone that had all their topics in a single folder. If you organize using folders you are better off.

Hopefully others will offer their own insights as to what they encountered.

Cheers... Rick

Report · May 30, 2009

Rick is right. It is subjective. Things like hyperlinks, bookmarks, DHTML etc. are all likely to cause performance issues when used extensively inside a single topic. For the author this is a minor annoyance but to the end user this is critical. You can get around these issuses with good topic and project design. What I think is critical for you is to sit down and plan out your project structure. Only then will you have a better idea of what is acceptable.

On a personal level I've not had a problem with projects of 2000 topics or more. One such project could take five minutes to open but it gave me a chance to have another coffee.