Child of a child merged HTML help not searchable

Report · Jan 26, 2011

In the help for Robohelp the ability to merge projects talks about the ability to merge project B into A and then A into C for example. This works very well for a single level merge for both TOC and index/search (doing all the right things). However, it appears the binary indexing does not work beyond one level. I cannot get project B (third level project merged ok into A) to be index/searched into a parent two levels up (C). The TOC works fine for all levels. Is this a limitation of the binary indexing? Is there a workaround? Currently using Robohelp 8 for HTML.

Report · Jan 28, 2011

Are you producing CHMs? If so, I remember having fun and games trying to get this to work some time ago. I gave up in the end as CHMs were never really designed to work in this way and it created so many issues. I think you'll find that the engine used to create CHMs just can't handle multi-layered merged TOCs.

The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

Report · Jan 28, 2011

Thanks Colum

We are producing CHMs and the master TOC works fine for multiple layers. The problem is getting the index and search to work when it is more than one layer down. I think it is an issue with the CHW file that is produced when using the final master CHM to look at the index or do a search. My hope is that there is a trick to making this work. In the meantime, we'll just structure down one level maximum to maintain the ability to search all topics.

Report · Jan 30, 2011

I got this to work for our product by hacking the xpj file of the parent. This adds the sub-child into the parent, without getting a duplicate entry in the TOC.

So, assuming you have a setup something like the following:

Product A (parent)

Product B (child)

Product C (child of B)

Add Product C to the TOC of Product B as normal.

Open the xpj file of Product A in a text editor.

In the <mergedhelpfiles> section, add the following:

        <file>
                <name>ProductC.chm</name>
                <comments></comments>
        </file>

Compile all your products and it should now work.

Hopefully that works (I don't think I made any other changes).

Amebr

Report · Jan 31, 2011

Amebr

Thanks for your help on this. This is an excellent workaround to add a sub child C without adding it to the TOC of A and have it searchable. However, it does require knowing about child C when creating parent A. The issue I am also working with is that the Master help (parent A) has a fixed set of known and preassigned chms (prod_help01, 02, etc.). The idea is not to update master A as new children at the B level are added.

In this scenario, when a first level child B has some additional options requiring help at the C level, adding child C to B but not to A allows child C to be part of the TOC of both parents but not be searchable from A (only from B). So, at this point my only option is to use one of the preassigned chm names for child C which raises it up as a child of A to allow its content to be searched. In the future, it looks like we can use your idea to create some preassigned <mergedhelpfiles> that will allow us to add level C children without actually merging them into parent A TOC.

Frank @ RF