RoboHelp HTML v11: Size limitations?

[julieh81866311]

Hello,

Our team is using RoboHelp HTML v11 to create one project with approximately 8,000 - 12,000 topics. We are not using many images - it is mostly text. Is there a limit on the number of topics one project can have? We would like to avoid splitting the project, if possible. 

I couldn't find any documentation about size limitations, so that's why I am posting here. We would rather know now than find out too late that there's a limit.

Any help you can provide is much appreciated! Thank you!

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

I've had projects that large. Mine also had lots and lots of images too. RoboHelp worked just fine for mine. The only issue I can think of that you may encounter would arise if you didn't use folders. You would definitely want to use folders to break the project into logical areas. If you don't operate this way, the RoboHelp dialogs take a long time to populate.

Cheers... Rick

[Captiv8r]

Oh, and sorry about not openly stating that there are no limitations on number of topics that I'm aware of. Likely only machine limitations such as disk space, installed RAM, stuff like that.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

No fixed limit. Judge it by whether or not the output works satisfactorily

on an average device.

I would expect a project of the size you quote to suffer a performance lag

but cannot say for sure.

[julieh81866311]

Rick and Peter -

Thanks so much for responding. It helps to hear others' experiences so we have a better idea of what to expect, performance-wise. We will be using folders and context-sensitive help, so hopefully, that will drive the users to the correct topics. 

Thanks again!

-Julie

[Peter Grainge]

The first sign of the project getting too big is the TOC taking a long time to display and searches and index use take a bit too long.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[julieh81866311]

Thanks, Peter!

Is there a best practice for how large a project really should be, or does it vary widely from project to project because of the different dependencies?  I've used RoboHelp for about five projects at previous jobs, but this is by far the largest application I've worked on. We do not want to design anything that will be unsustainable in the future.

Again, I appreciate your time and expertise!

[Peter Grainge]

No best practice. I once helped someone with just a few thousand topics but

the project was a pig to work on and use. Reason was a high number of

graphics but there are no figures for all text or any mix of text and

graphics. Merged help did prove to be the answer there.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it is one school of thought. However, if you

are seeing signs of overloading the truck, why carry on loading that one

just to have to unload it onto another one later?

Try making a copy of the project and trashing half the topics. Is there a

significant performance improvement? If there is, expect to get pulled over

for too much weight!