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M
MLimtiaco
Participant
May 14, 2008
Answered

Double-entry Search results!

  • May 14, 2008
  • 3 replies
  • 5338 views
Hello! This odd behavior occurs when I generate a .chm and use my main project directory (or a subdirectory) as the output folder for the .chm. If I use the Search feature in the finished .chm, I get double entries for each topic, and only one of each works.

Ah, but if I create a folder up one level from my main project folder and use that as my output folder...no double Search results. If I use Desktop as my output destination...no problem. As long as my output folder is not the same as or contained within my main project folder, the .chm Search behaves as it should and returns only single entries for each topic.

I have multiple projects that use the same general directory structure, and I usually output the .chm to a directory called "Deliverables" for each separate project. None of the other projects have this peculiar Search problem.

I have seen a sort-of related article in which deleting files that begin with "rlt" solves a similar issue. No such files exist in this project directory. I have poked through the various files the RH generates for the project, and haven't seen anything that looks like it could cause this weird problem.

So yes, I have a workaround...but I should not need one. Does anyone know what's going on here? And how do I fix it?
This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer MLimtiaco
Yup, I looked through the funky .chm using FAR HTML's HH Utilities tool. Almost every legitimate topic had a double, preceded by "../," at the root level of the .chm. All the legit topics were also in their directories as expected, and if viewed in the HH Utilities tool appeared as they should in the .chm, using the specified CSS. The doubles, however, appeared as plain text with no styles applied. Weird!

Pete, since this is part of some API documentation for our customers, nothing to hide here - I can send you a copy for further investigation. Might help to note that this was originally an RH x5 project that I imported and recreated in RH7.
Problem solved...Pete Lees took a closer look at the .chm in question and found several links to "upstream" topics - topics above the main project directory, and which did not appear in the .hhp file in the Topics list. Correcting the links fixed the problem...thanks Pete!

However, I still wonder why RH created doubles of the "missing" topics and dumped them into the .chm file, where they could not be viewed as part of the .chm, but found if you used one of the .chm utilities. That doubled the file size unnecessarily, which was originally my first clue that something wonky was happening.

3 replies

A
Anonymous
June 10, 2009

FYI, the suggestion to compile to a folder higher in the heirarchy than my project folder helped me with a similar problem where I was getting duplicates in my See Also popups.

P
Pete_Lees
Participating Frequently
May 15, 2008
Hi, MLimtiaco, and welcome,

This problem typically occurs when you compile into your CHM some HTML topic files that are above the "root" of the help project — perhaps because they are the targets of hyperlinks in topics at or below the root level. See:

http://helpware.net/FAR/far_faq.htm#Project_Setup

Pete
M
MLimtiacoAuthor
Participant
May 15, 2008
All folders checked for other .chm files - nada. Checked the .hhp Files list to see if anything preceded by "../" might be included in the compile process - also nada. Does one of the Reports give you a list of topics upstream from the main project folder? I've spot checked links in a couple dozen topics and found nothing.
P
Pete_Lees
Participating Frequently
May 16, 2008
Hi,

You might try using the Examine CHM File facility in KeyTools to peek inside your help file and see if anything is obviously wrong.

http://www.keyworks.net/keytools.htm

If no suitable reports are available from within RoboHelp, can you run a search across the HTML topic files for URLs with a leading "../" string? (Some may be legitimate, depending on how your project folders are structured.)

If you feel comfortable doing so, please send me the .chm file with the broken search results so that I can take a closer look.

Pete
D
dsarig
Inspiring
May 15, 2008
Check that you do not have another copy of your .chm somewhere in your folder (the main project directory or any of its subdirectories). Delete it and then try generating again.

Good luck,
Debbie Sarig
www.lingotip.com - Tranlsating the World!
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