Chinese & English help pages (Robohelp 8)- Chinese pages not displayed in final output

Report · Feb 16, 2011

I am generating a .chm file with a mix of Chinese and English topics.

The Simple Chinese characters render properly everwhere. Not an issue.

Steps to reproduce:

Generate Microsoft HTML help.
View Result.

English pages are displayed.
Chinese content pages "cannot be displayed."

This is not an issue of the .chm being over the network - it's a local build and of course the English pages are displayed.

Questions:

Is the problem that the Chinese characters are in the file name perhaps. I link this from Framemaker files. But as I mentioned above, there is no problem generating the .chm.
Is this a specific bug in Robohelp 8 with Chinese characters and .chm output?

Important: I can generate WebHelp - all pages are displayed properly. But I really want Microsoft HTML help .chm as output.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Report · Feb 18, 2011

I would try file names in English.

You can first try renaming just one or two files, and obviously the links leading to them.

Report · Feb 18, 2011

This causes the filename in the TOC to be in English. Yes, i can view the page, but I cannot have the TOC in English.

My project is linked from Framemaker sources files in Chinese. All heading 1s and 2s are of course in Chinese.

The process transfers headings in Framemaker to topic names in Chinese, which become filenames in Chinese.

And topic names are unfortunately displayed in the TOC. I cannot have English topic names in the TOC.

Even using the Project Settings TopicName change to <$filename_no_ext>-<n> did not help.

The problem is the architecture. In Robohelp topicname=filename. They should be mutually exclusive.

Any suggestions?

Report · Feb 20, 2011

This is can be very well achieved in RoboHelp. RoboHelp does support this workflow of specifying a different file name and topic title while bring in content from FrameMaker to RoboHelp.

This can achieved through FrameMaker markers in the following manner.

1. Open the source FrameMaker document.

2. Create a new maker type for splitting the document say "SplitMarker"

3. Specify a file name say "FMDoc" in the marker text and insert the marker at the beginning of the paragraph where the document is to be splitted.

4. Open RoboHelp Project Settings dialog (File->Project Settings)

5. Go to "Import" tab and click "Edit" button for FrameMaker document conversion settings.

5. Conversion Settings dialog is opened. Select "Other Settings" on the left.

6. Select the radio button for "Topic Name Marker" and specify the marker type created in FrameMaker (e.g. SplitMarker in our case)

7. Import/Update the FrameMaker document to split the document at the spcified location.

The new topic generated will have file name as specified as marker text and topic title picked from the document content.

I hope this helps you achieveing the desired work flow.

Mayank