Merged WebHelp Projects & Context Sensitivity

[hermi14]

Hi. I'm excerpting from a topic I posted to in the wrong location. Below is the exchange I had with Peter Grainge. In the next message I will post my additional question(s):

Peter Grainge wrote:
For WebHelp we use the startpage'htm#path/targettopic.htm method and it works well. See my site for more information. Visit www.grainge.org for a range of RoboHelp and authoring related topics


hermi14 wrote:
Thanks. Now that I understand the difference between Webhelp and HTML Help, I see that this topic only covers context sensitivity with merged *HTML Help* projects (which use the CHM file). What happened was that I searched for this topic across several forums and failed to notice that the topic covers "RoboHelp for HTML Help" (the output type) not "RoboHelp for HTML" (the user interface type)!

I see now that my project must use the Webhelp format and I am happy to learn that context sensitivity for Webhelp merged projects has been successfully worked out and documented already as compatible with RH7!!!

Due to a combination of VPN access issues, the fact that I have only one other writer working on my project, and my deep distrust of applications like RoboSource Control (which has been confirmed by just a little bit of testing), I've decided to use merged projects instead of source control as a collaboration tool.

I'm sure you will hear more from me. You rock (rap, or otherwise harmonize)!!!

Peter Grainge wrote:
Check what you plan to do with your developers. This affects their calls to the help.

[hermi14]

I've read the instructions by Greg Minter on calling merged Webhelp topics using Map IDs. However, since that article has not been updated since 2006, I am still wondering whether anyone has successfully used this method with RH7 and IE7.

[hermi14 · Accepted solution]

OK, I'm answering my own question. (Hopefully this will redeem me for some of the stupid newbie questions I've asked so far and which have been very patiently answered by the gurus--mostly Peter G.)

I just tested context sensitivity on a merged webhelp project created in RH7 and using IE 7 and it works!!!! Yahoo!!!

**I used the Javascript call from a web page to test.
**I've only tested the RHShowHelp() function using the HH_HELP_CONTEXT parameter
**I've brought up the default topic (which is the first topic in the first merged project--the one that is redirected to from the parent project).
**I've brought up a specific topic with no nav pane based on map ID.

As mentioned, I followed Greg Minter's instructions from 2006 posted on PG's site. However, here are some clarifications/changes to those steps (please forgive me if anybody already knew this stuff):

***You don't have to manually copy and paste the Map IDs from the Map ID (*.h) files of the child projects into the Map ID file of the parent project. Just generate the parent and child projects as usual and the references are automated.

***[Concommitantly] You don't have to manually place the Map ID (*.h) file in the output folder (mergedprojects\projectnnn), as he describes.

Woo Hoo.