chm file linked to an application is not working

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
July 11, 2008
2 replies
952 views

Hi friends,

I'm new to this forum. Ofcourse our company is new to RoboHelp. Right now we are using RH6. Developers have designed an application and they had integrated the chm file which i developed in that application. But when i open the chm file in the application, it is not opening. Spent huge time since morning in reading topics addressed in this fourm....kindly guide me to solve this...

HTML

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Anonymous

I am having a similar problem, except the *.chm help appears accurately if selected from the Help menu of the application, but it does not appear by pressing F1 (I get a "Failed to Launch Help" message).

I'm told that my older versions of the *.chm files work with F1 in our current application.

Any ideas how this anomaly can occur? I'm using RoboHelp HTML 6.

thanks,
ChristyG

Captiv8r

Brainiac

Hi Christy

This can occur in a variety of ways. Assuming the older .CHM files work just dandy and the new one doesn't, the finger would certainly seem to be pointing at your .CHM file, no?

I would begin by inspecting a working vs a non-working .CHM file and see what the differences are. You may need to decompile each and look at the files. You are probably interested in files with the following extensions.

.H
.HM
.ALI

Cheers... Rick

A

Anonymous

Thanks for your response!

I found out what the problem was. Somehow my topics lost all their links to the map file. This may have occurred over six months ago when I copied a help project from one folder to a new folder. (Perhaps I broke the links when I did that.) Anyway, I imported the latest HTMLDEFINES.H file and mapped my main default topic to the HIDR_MAINFRAME map ID. This has always been the map ID for me to assign to the default help topic whenever I want the topic to appear from the main application window. (I compiled the help project and tested it out with the application. The F1 link now works!)

Another saving grace for me is that I've always created an Excel spreadsheet of all context-sensitive help topics and list what map ID they should be assigned to. I'm glad I've been doing this because otherwise I'd have to re-invent the wheel and determine which help topic I should associate with which map ID. (Our developers always have weird map ID names that are not easily identifiable.)

Happy Friday!

ChristyG

RoboColum_n_

Brainiac

Hi chandhini and welcome to the RH community.

So we can help you, can you confirm exactly what the problem is. "Not opening" can mean any number of things. Does the CHM window not open? Does it open but at the incorrect place? Where is the CHM (e.g. user's local PC)? Are you using Context Sensetive Help? Sorry for all the questions but we need to know to be in a position to help further.

J

johnmccallum

Inspiring

I'll add a few questions to Colum's list and a few suggestions to try. I assume you can open the .chm from windows explorer but not from the application. Is this correct? If so, the problem may lie on the developer's end. Do you know how they are calling help? Your company is "new to RoboHelp." Are you also new to HTML Help (.chm files)? If not, what help authoring tools have you used before?

RoboHelp has a tool called "BugHunter" which you can use to intercept the help message sent from the application. The output from this can be very useful in determining where the error lies. I would suggest running this while you try to summon help from the application and let us know what it reports.

John

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded