RH9 where do baggage files go in merged projects?

[Krischu]

We have a quite complex RH9 (formerly RH5 and still not fully migrated) project that has one main project and several subprojects.

The main project has a merged index and thus it is using the .chm files of the subprojects as baggage files.

When the subprojects .chms are compiled we put them all into the main projects working directory.

The subprojects also have some baggage files from their sibling projects. They are put also into their respective working directories.

When the merged HTML Project is compiled the resulting target is built into the main projects working dir but

the baggage files are also copied into the working dir of the main project thus overwriting already built subproject .chms.

Quite a mess which I presently don't see a way out.

Somewhere in the online help of RH9 is being spoken of a directory mergedProjects which should be built when a

merged index is created. I could not yet see this being created in a HTML project. That's probably good for another thread.

Help appreciated.

I would also appreciate if there's a way to do all build operations in a kind of batch run. Presently it is tremendously tedious to

click through all projects and build them.

--

Christoph

[namedujour]

I deal with bunches of child projects. I never had any luck creating a .chm parent/child project, so I'm not the best person - I couldn't get it to work, and as I recall I concluded it couldn't be done. That was also Robohelp 9. (I can't speak for RH5 - you say it worked in that version?)  It's been a long time since I totally gave up on it and I don't recall the details of the fiasco, but  I'm wondering if that's what you're encountering too.

Is there a chance you could create a Webhelp project instead? In that file structure you're publishing the child projects to a subdirectory (mergedProjects) under the parent project, so nothing gets overwritten. If it has to be .chm, I don't know how to advise you.

And yes, you can publish in batches, but only if you have multiple single source layouts in one project.. Go to File>Generate>Batch Generate, and select the Single Source Layouts you want to generate. But you still have to publish all your individual projects separately. (sorry)

PS. When you do parent/child projects as Webhelp, the merged indexes aren't treated as baggage files. Just changing your output type may solve all your problems.

[Krischu]

Thanks. What the batch generating is concerned, I meanwhile discovered RHCL.EXE (Robohelp Command Line Compiler).

"c:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp 9\RoboHTML\rhcl"

Adobe(R) RoboHelp Project Command Line Compiler Version 9.0.1.262

Copyright (C) 2006-2007, Adobe Systems Incorporated und Lizenzgeber. Alle Rechte

vorbehalten.

Verwendung: RHCL [-?] Projekt [-l Layoutname] [-p [Servername[:Benutzername:Kenn

wort]] [-o Ausgabeordnername] [-d]

Optionsbeschreibung:

Projekt  Gibt eine RoboHelp-Projektdatei an .xpj.

-l       Gibt einen Layoutnamen an.

         Primäres Layout wird als Standard verwendet.

-p       Gibt einen Veröffentlichungsserver mit optionalem Benutzernamen und Ken

nwort an.

Wird nach -p kein Servername angegeben, veröffentlicht RHCL das Ergebnis

auf allen Servern, die dem Layout zur Verfügung stehen.

-o       Gibt den Namen des Ausgabeordners an.

Der standardmäßige Ausgabeordner für das Layout wird als Standard verwendet.

-d       Zeigt alle Layoutnamen und Veröffentlichungsservernamen an.

-b       Erstellt alle Layouts, die im Projekt auf Batchgenerierung eingestellt

sind.

-g       Protokolldateiname.

-?, -h   Fordert Online-Hilfe an.

Beispiele:

  RHCL c:\project\myhelp.xpj

  RHCL "c:\my project\myhelp.xpj"

  RHCL c:\MY_DOC~1\MY_PROJ~1.XPJ

  RHCL c:\project\myproject.xpj -d

  RHCL c:\project\myhelp.xpj -l "Microsoft HTML Help"

  RHCL c:\project\myhelp.xpj -l WebHelp -p

  RHCL c:\project\myhelp.xpj -l FlashHelp -p server1:user1:password1 -p server2

  RHCL c:\project\myhelp.xpj -l "My Layout" -o "c:\Output\My Layout Output"

For the merged index to work with map ids and context sensitive help I finally ended up in writing a tool that reads all .ALI files and generates one big .ALI file in the main project. This repairs the issues I had with missing #IVB sections in the resulting merged .CHM.

--

Christoph