Changing Case between Windows and Linux environments

[artm54446707]

My office has recently transitioned our software application from an on-premises (i.e., local datacenter) Windows Server environment to an AWS Cloud Linux environment.  The problem:  While Windows Server didn't seem to care how our files are named, the same can't be said of Linux.  Linux is apparently looking for files to be named in camel case.  We have eight RoboHelp project folders that this impacts, and within those folders are over 100,000+ references to files and folders that need to be changed to camel case.  (NOTE:  I think I have the nomenclature correct, I'm getting this from a developer.  I myself am a tech writer who does most of the content development in Rh, but I don't get 'under the hood' on issues like this.)  Here's an example of an affected file name:

Old (Windows/incorrect)       New (Linux/correct)
InstallRemovalBySN.htm        InstallRemovalBySn.htm

My developer is telling me that the change needs to be made from within RoboHelp, but I have no idea how this might be done.

I've done some Web research and there are case change applications out there, but since we're on Govt systems, installing handy case change apps is pretty much out of the question.

Any help out there?

Thanks!

[Peter Grainge]

The output does not have to be camel case or any other case, what it does have to be is consistent. Thus if the file name you have a link to is any given case, the link must be the same.

If the developer is insisting on camel case, that is another matter and you will need to argue it out.

When you create links, the link should be the same as the file name. What you need to avoid is then selecting the output to be lowercase as then you might have a mismatch.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[artm54446707]

If I'm understanding things correctly, the reason we're seeing these problems is that when we were on-premises, we were using Apache 2 and it had a module that managed the case issue.  Moving to the Cloud, we're on Tomcat and it doesn't have the same functionality.  So we're trying to figure out a solution where we can make wholesale updates to file and folder references in our project.

[Amebr]

As Peter says, Windows OS is typically case insensitive, while Linux is typically case sensitive. It can be changed in either, but web server admins tend to not want to do that.

I would say your best bet for find the links with the case mismatch would be to run the Topic References report. It lists the file name and all incoming and outgoing links. You'll then be able to see the file name capitalisation and compare it to the list of incoming and outgoing links to determine which topics will need to change.

Usually the capitalisation will be incorrect when someone has manually typed the link/filename so hopefully this will be a fairly small list to change (most people select from the dialog boxes so the capitalisation would be correct in these cases).

The lowercase output Peter mentions is a checkbox in the output preset. While it was intended to fix things for linux systems, the last time I looked it didn't always change the folder capitalisation for generated things like skins. Which is why Peter suggests turning it off.

(You could also test it and raise a bug with Adobe if you find this is still the case. 🙂 https://tracker.adobe.com/

Post the item number in the discussion so people can easily vote if they want the same functionality. )