Malformed topic - RH9

Report · Jun 09, 2011

Hi,

since a few days, I'm encountering problems generating my printed documentation in RH 9.
I checked the internet for answers, tried every possibility (included those of Peter Grainge) and I still get the error.

This is what happens: I generate the documentation, and suddenly, one topic gets malformed. All topics after that are malformed too. So the Word output only contains the well generated topics.

What I do notice is that, sometimes (!!!not always), when I delete the first malformed topic and make a new one, the doc gets generated completely.

I am wondering what is triggering the error. It can't be right to have to delete and make a new topic for every error like this. It will cost me ages to try to repair this kind of stuff - I have several RH projects running.

At first, I thought it was a resource issue (as mentioned by Peter G) but then I got a 64bit Win 7 with 8G RAM installed, this should suffice i guess?

Could anyone help me? It's rather urgent...

If you need more info, I will gladly provide you with it...

Thanks very much!

Report · Jun 10, 2011

I'm not sure if you have read one of my posts or the page at http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/printing/print_issues.htm

The latter contains a number of causes and you likely don't have malformed topics. It can be an erroneous error message.

Also see if the topics contain these meta tags. They can cause grief. They can be deleted.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Report · Jun 10, 2011

Hi Peter,

Sadly enough I don't think it is an erroneous error message, since my Word document is empty as from the topic that is marked malformed in the Output View. When I generate webhelp though, everything is OK.

I have tried every solution you've given, including the ones you mention on your site (using the RH style mapping template, deleted the metatags, the codes after the bookmarked heading...). About the (personal) template I'm using I am pretty sure, because in other projects, it works fine.

This is the HTML of the first topic causing problems:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<head>

<title>RFS Workflow</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>RFS Workflow</h1>

<p class="Text-1">Click on the desired workflow step to go to the corresponding

business rules.</p>

<p class="Text-1"><img src="../visio RFS workflow.png" title="Request Fulfilment Workflow"

alt="Request Fulfilment Workflow" style="border: none;"

border="0" /></p>

<p class="Text-1">Click <a href="../Perform_RFs_Process_Steps/Request_Fulfilment_Workflow.htm">here</a>

to go to the work instructions flow.</p>

</body>

</html>

It doesn't seem to me that there are any problems with it so i'm quit puzzled...

Report · Jun 10, 2011

What I mean is that you are being told there is a malformed topic while the cause of the empty document may be something else.

I think the next step is to zip up a copy of your project to preserve it while identifying the problem. Then make two copies and trash different halves of the topics. Generate a printed output from both and see if one falls over.

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Report · Jun 10, 2011

What I mean is you are being told the problem is a malformed topic but the reason you are getting an empty document may well be something else.

Time to zip up your project so that you can preserve it as is while you do some troubleshooting.

Make two copies of the project and trash different halves of the topics. Ignore broken link warnings. Generate printed documents from both and see if one fails. If it does create another copy of that and then trash half again. Keep going until you identify the problem. It will likely not take as long as you might think.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Report · Jun 10, 2011

Hi Peter,

I have done as you told me. The only "problem" now is, that both halves generate perfectly.... When I then import one part in the other, it works perfectly, too...

Now the only thing that still puzzles me is how this is possible? Other than that, my problem is solved to I guess the question is answered.

Thanks!

Report · Jun 10, 2011

If it's working, step away quietly. Best not to poke around further, especially on a Friday.

I would guess something got messed up in the SSL and the changes fixed it.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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