Problem with Context- sensitive (CSH ).chm help (CSH .chm help generated using CSH Winhelp

[urmiroy]

Hi ,

I have a context sensitive Winhelp Project that needs to be converted to a context- sensitive .chm file using RoboHelp 7.0. The context- sensitive Winhelp Project was created using RoboHelp 2002.

I have used RoboHelp for HTML to convert it into a context –sensitive .chm file. Is this the right way? Or should I have used RoboHelp for Word?

The .chm is generated fine, but according to the technical team the context-sensitivity no longer works when the .chm is integrated into the application. I understand that the tech. team needs to use the .h files to integrate it and make it context-sensitive, but they are of the opinion that with the old files (Winhelp Project), just the old .hlp files was good enough to make it context-sensitive.

How should I approach this ? What are the files that I need to give the developers so that they can integrate it into the application, other than .h files. What do they need to do? They do not have RoboHelp on the system.

Would appreciate any insight on this.
Thanks.
UR

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, UR, and welcome,

I believe that two things need to happen in order for the context help calls that previously worked with a WinHelp project to work with an HTML Help project.

1) Your developers must change their WinHelp API calls to HTML Help API calls. This should be a fairly straightforward job for them, as Microsoft modelled the HTML Help API on the WinHelp API in order to simplify the process of updating existing applications from WinHelp to HTML Help. For example, a typical WinHelp API command looks like this:

WinHelp(HWnd, "helpfile.hlp", HELP_CONTEXT, 1001)

The HTML Help API equivalent is almost the same:

HtmlHelp(HWnd, "helpfile.chm", HH_HELP_CONTEXT, 1001)

For information for developers on how to call an HTML Help file from an application, see these pages:

http://www.mshelpwiki.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=HTMLHelpArticles
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms524256(VS.85).aspx

2) In the new HTML Help project, you must ensure that the map numbers that the application passes to the help file are assigned to the appropriate topics. This is described in RoboHelp's online help in the topic called "Assign map IDs to topics", available online at:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/RoboHelp/RHTML/7.0/Context-sensitive/Map_IDs_and_map_files/Assigning_map...

It shouldn't normally be necessary to change the existing map numbers and topic IDs just because you're moving from WinHelp to HTML Help.

As with the old WinHelp project, the only file that you should need to give the developers is the .chm file -— not the map file as well. The only instance where this wouldn't be the case is when you rather than the developers are responsible for creating the map file, but that doesn't seem to true in your environment.

Pete

[urmiroy]

Hello Pete,

Many thanks for your quick response.

I tried out the steps suggested by you. As you say, "It shouldn't normally be necessary to change the existing map numbers and topic IDs just because you're moving from WinHelp to HTML Help."

I am a little confused here. The map ids of the WinHelp file do not match the map ids of the .chm file. For e.g. if a topic in the WinHelp project has a map id 20066, in the HTML project the map id is 131174.

Do I need to reassign 20066 again to this html topic?

Please advise. I appreciate your time.

Best regards
Urmi Roy (UR)

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Urmi,

Yes, I believe so. Essentially, you and the developers need to use the same set of map numbers. So you must map the old WinHelp numbers (20066, etc.) to the topics in your .chm file, or the developers must replace the old numbers in their code with the new numbers (131174, etc.) that are currently mapped to the topics in your .chm file.

If you go down the second route, you'll need to provide your map (.h) file to the developers so that they can see the numbers to use.

Pete

[urmiroy]

Hello Pete,

Thanks for your response.

I figured out that both the numbers were referring to the same topic. One was a decimal number, whereas the other is a hexadecimal number. When I open the imported map id files in the html project (.h files) the ids are identified by their hexadecimal ids (which were provided by the developers). However, if I go to Context Sensitive Help> Map Files>All Map Files and try to edit the map id it shows the decimal number.

Just wondering if this could have led to any confusion. However, as you pointed out earlier, the files and their map ids have imported correctly during the conversion.

Have you come across anything like this?

Thanks
Best regards
Urmi