Print Friendly Help files

[Guest]

I currently maintain Help files, QRCs, and manuals. I'm working on a process that will enable the user to print the Help file topic and use it as a QRC. That will eliminate some of my work load and make my life easier.

Here's the challenge: currently one topic can be 4 or more pages (to keep screens within the 1 1/2 screen length). I want something like a Macro so that the user can select a Print Friendly button and the macro will open and print all pages within the topic. Have any of you any experience in this sort of thing? I don't see where RoboHelp has a macro function. Can anyone help? Any suggestions/ideas?
Otherwise, I'll have to combine all pages into one and then my Help files will be long scrolling screens and I don't like to ignore industry standards; not to mention the amount of work that will involve with 4 different Help systems.
thanks

[Guest]

In a CHM file, an end user can right-click on a chapter / book title in the Table of Contents and select Print, then choose to print all topics within the chapter. Could that be what you are looking for?

In my experience, by the way, I have found that trying to print whole chapters (or multiple topics) at a time ends in not-good-ness. I don't know the threshhold, but at some point my printers run out of memory or something, and just start spewing gibberish. I always end up printing one topic at a time. Wouldn't say my topics are particularly involved - rarely more than a screen length, although many have one or two tables and maybe a screen shot.

So be prepared, I guess, for the possibility that whatever you figure out as a way to print multiple topics, you can still run up against printer issues that send you back to printing one topic at a time.

Good luck.

[Captiv8r]

Hi all

For starters, I've never been overly concerned with page length. Sometimes it simply makes sense to leave a page longer and provide some form of navigation within the page to move from section to section. But I digress.

You know, one of the strong points of Adobe Acrobat is the fact that it prints things out exactly as intended. As a result, one of my suggestions when users ask for an ability to print chapters or the whole enchilada is to create an Acrobat .PDF file of the content. Then provide a link that opens that .PDF and allows them to print from the .PDF.

Just thinking out loud a bit... Rick

[Guest]

OK, I've created several pdfs and added a link to the pdf copy. However, when I generate, the CHM file won't open the pdf. Is there some kind of trick here? I've saved the pdf files in the project folder and I've even copied them to the baggage folder. How do I get RH to open the pdf?

[Guest]

Ok, I tried this and it's not quite working. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong?
When I right-click the book title, Print is not an Option, so I select Print Target. I get a message: Unable to print URL. Please navigate directly to this page and select Print.

Where are you getting the Print All pages in the Chapter option? Is that a robohelp print option or is that something on your printer? Thanks

[Guest]

Well, what do you know? I found the Options tab on the Print window. This old dog learned a new trick, I'll be dog gone. Thanks!!

[RoboColum_n_]

Check the link to the PDF carefully and ensure the baggage file also points to the correct file. Are you using a relative / absolute path?