Responsive HTML5 Slow Generation

[bwhansen]

My team and I are running into a situation where Responsive HTML5 outputs take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes to generate.

Publishing the output takes less than a minute, but the generation times are killing us.

Does the size (qty of topics/files) of the project have any bearing on this?

Is there anything that can be done to reduce the generation time?

Here are some details:

Source files are stored in SharePoint using RoboHelp version control.

Opening the project downloads the files to a directory on my local (C:) drive.

Generated output is sent to the !SSL!\Responsive_HTML5 folder on the local drive.

Typical setup:

• RoboHelp 2015 (Version 12.02.384)
• Windows 10
• Intel Core i5-6300U @ 2.40GHz
• 16 GB RAM
• 512 GB SSD 

[Peter Grainge]

Size and quantity can be an issue but it's rare. How many topics and how many images? Rough figures will do.

I think I would first establish whether the issue is environment or project. Open the Employee Care sample project and see how long that takes to generate. Click Open on the RoboHelp Starter page and then click Samples in the ribbon on the left.

If that is more what you are expecting, a minute or two, then the issue is not your environment.

You are saying that opening the project downloads the files. I am not a source control user but I thought that before generating, everyone else needs to check stuff in and you need to then check it all out, not just open the project.

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See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

[RoboFan]

I provided some output generation stats for comparison. Note that I'm running RH2017 - though my PC is no more powerful than the specs you provided. We use version control via MS SQL Server Express on a dedicated, networked virtual machine running Win7. I have a working copy of the project on my local PC, which is where I generate the output. Generating the output doesn't require me (automatically or manually) to download the project (it already exists on my local PC) or even to get the latest version of all files (though that's something we do - manually peform a "get latest version all" via RoboSource Control, which then grabs everything from the version control database and downloads it to my local PC). That can take a few minutes (max), but it's also independent from the actual generating the output process.

PROJECT 1

     PROJECT STATS

• 600 MB total size
• 12,850 files
• 260 folders

     OUTPUT

• Windows 10, RH2017, Responsive HTML 5 with build expression = None
• 150 MB total size
• 3,200 files
• 50 folders
• Generate time, start-to-finish = 6 minutes

PROJECT 2

    PROJECT STATS

• 400 MB total size
• 6,300 files
• 250 folders

     OUTPUT STATS

• Windows 10, RH2017, Responsive HTML 5 with build expression = None
• 310 MB total size
• 5,000 files
• 225 folders
• Generate time, start-to-finish = 5 minutes

[Peter Grainge]

OK but how long did Employee Care 3 take as a yard stick?

I am not unduly surprised by those times with that number of files. I once inherited about 14,000 files that I broke down into merged help and found then that over 4/5,000 things did drag noticeably. That was webhelp but I would expect the same.

You said earlier up to 45 minutes, that is slow. Same project as above or a specific one?

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See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

[RoboFan]

Hi Peter. I'm not Britton. Just weighing in on my experience - for some additional context.

[bwhansen]

Hi Peter,

The Employee Care 3 project took less than a minute to generate.

Generation times experienced by my team range from 10 minutes up to 45 minutes.

We are currently working with our IS department to gather performance data.

[Peter Grainge]

@RoboFan Doh, thanks for picking me up.

@Britton OK. Come back if there's anything else that can be done here.

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See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

[Amebr]

One question, you say it's downloaded to your local drive. Can you confirm if that is in your C:\Users\<yourname> directory (My Documents and Desktop both count as your user directory)? If it is, check with your IT department if they have re-mapped your user directory to a network drive - some companies do that for backup purposes and it can slow things down. If it is mapped to the network, try downloading the project to something like c:\myprojects instead and see if that helps.