Snippets not displaying in Author view

[amie68]

I have a RH 2022.3.93 file with a large number of Snippets. The vast majority were created in a previous version of RoboHelp before categories were available to help organize snippets. Therefore, they do not have a category assigned.

Previously we were able to view the list of snippets in the Author window. Now we see only the default category, with no snippets.

Snippets are still there and still work correctly. This appears to be a display issues only. If we type a snippet name in the search box, the snippet name is displayed. If we add a category to a snippet, it is also displayed. Given the number of snippets that we have (>3600), manually adding each to a category is not a quick fix.

Any idea why these are no longer displayed?

[Peter Grainge]

Take a look at the RoboHelp Tour on my site in the 2022 section. How Snippets work now is described there. Come back if you have further questions. 

BTW Update 4 is available. 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

Thanks, we use Snippets extensively and are comfortable with how they work. My question is why they were displayed in the Snippet panel the last time we opened a file and are not displayed there today.

[amie68]

To add to this ... when the file was converted to RH2022, all snippets were assigned to the default category. Now, they have no category assigned. I'm sure that's why we don't see them in the snippet window - but how did that happen, and is there any way to do a mass maintenance of snippets to assign them to a category?

We use Azure Repos for source control - I can see in the version history for the snippet files that there has been no mass change to files to indicate that someone manually did this.

[Peter Grainge]

I misunderstood. 

Are saying that if you toggle the Default label they still do not show? 

If that is not the problem, a screenshot would help. 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

Yes, when we toggle the default label, there are no snippets displayed even though there are >3,000 in this help file. These previously were displayed under the default label.

[Peter Grainge]

Old snippets automatically were assigned to default.

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Peter Grainge]

Something is nagging me that someone else saw this. Try searching the forum using the lower of the two search boxes. I'll see what I can find in the morning, it's evening here.

It might be worth applying Update 4. If I am right, maybe that will fix it. 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

I found this one, but looks like the person who submitted didn't work through to resolution.

Why does the Snippet Category I've assigned to all... - Adobe Community - 14083103

[Peter Grainge]

That is the one I was thinking about. It is a slightly different problem but close enough. That is the only report I have seen.

My guess is that the source control is involved. Have you tried taking a complete new copy?

In File Explorer go to your project and look in Assets > Snippets. Are all your Snippets showing in the folder? Are they in Source Control as well?

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

Snippets are displayed in Assets > Snippets in file explorer and in source control.

Deleted local files and got a new copy from source control. Slight change after doing that - 7 snippets display in snippet pane/default instead of none. Still 3,000+ that aren't displayed.

[Peter Grainge]

How many Snippets in source control? 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

All Snippets present in source control.

[Peter Grainge]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems the issue is they are not getting pulled out of source control. 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

No, they are being pulled from source control. I can access them in the RH file if I do a search in the snippet pane.

This is how the pane displays when I open the file - with only 7 snippets displayed.

If I enter something in the search box, snippets matching the search criteria are displayed.

[Peter Grainge]

With you. 

Try Update 4. It might just fix something. 

If not try deleting the .rh folder and reopening the project.

After that, I think it is one for Support. See https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your Adobe Support options. The email link tcssup@adobe.com is recommended as it reaches a team dedicated to Technical Communication Suite products including RoboHelp.

Let me know the outcome. 

________________________________________________________
My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

Thx for your help. Have to jump to something else and will tackle again tomorrow. Will let you know the outcome.

[WoutJacobs · Accepted solution]

What you see in the snippet panel is controlled by the snippetcategories.xml file in /settings.

Snippet categories were released buggy on arrival in update 3 (https://community.adobe.com/t5/robohelp-discussions/error-in-new-snippet-categorization-with-2022-3/....

It used to add everything to categories, not only snippets (e.g. images). This should have been fixed in update 4 (https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/kb/fixed-issues.html) but your snippetcategories.xml file might have become an unrepairable mess by now, especially if you work with others in git.

I recommend re-making that file. I'm not sure if RH reconstructs a snippetcategories.xml file if you delete it, though.

As usual, you can fix most things with code if all else fails:

import os
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# add paths to your snippets and your snippetcategories.xml file
snippetlist = 'C:\\Users\\XXX\\Documents\\GitHub\\RH\\Projects\\XXX\\contents\\assets\\snippets'
snippetcategories = 'C:\\Users\\XXX\\Documents\\GitHub\\RH\\Projects\\XXX\\settings\\snippetcategories.xml'

rootXML = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><categories></categories>'
firstsoup = BeautifulSoup(rootXML, 'xml')
soup = firstsoup.find('categories')

categories = ['default']

for category in categories:
    category_tag = firstsoup.new_tag('category')
    category_tag['name'] = category
    soup.append(category_tag)

default_category = soup.find('category', attrs={'name': 'default'})

for snippet in os.listdir(snippetlist):

    snippet_tag = firstsoup.new_tag('snippet')
    snippet_tag.string = f'../contents/assets/snippets/{snippet}'
    default_category.append(snippet_tag)

with open(snippetcategories, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as file:
    file.write(str(firstsoup))

[amie68]

I saw the post you referenced above and wondered if the issue we are having is related. 

Thanks for the info. I am going to update to version 4 first, then move to an update of the snippetcategories.xml file.

Takes some coordination to get all team members to upgrade so that we are on the same version and have a deadline to meet in another project, so this likely won't happen today. Didn't want a lack of response/progress from me on this to make it appear that I am not following up. 

Thanks for this info - I appreciate the time you've taken to help me with this.

[amie68 · Accepted solution]

I have resolved this issue - snippets are now displayed as expected in the snippet pane.

Actions taken to resolve:

• Installed update 4.
• Located the last version of snippetcategories.xml in source control that included all snippets. 
• Replaced the corrupted version of snippetcategories.xml with the clean version from source control.

Thanks for pointing me to that snippetcategories.xml file. Once I knew that held the info that controlled how these were displayed, it made my troubleshooting much easier.

[Peter Grainge]

When you took the fresh copy of the project from source control, whilst I am not a source control user, surely that should have downloaded all the files in the project. That would include snippetcategories.xml.

I am therefore confused as to what you have done that is different, other than copy it separately.

My other concern is that if your system did not download the file when you took a fresh copy, I am wondering if this problem could occur again.

Adobe posted this information in a thread when the new UI was introduced.

****************************************

"Files inside .rh folder need not be checked-in to version control.

Topics kept inside top-level-foldername/.rh/.username.fr.cache/contents have topic files whose text is saved here for find and replace feature. We find in these files for text search.

Files like .username.db.json is for reading the project while opening. Project open is faster with this cache file.

File .username.preferences.json contains detail related to recently opened files, generated outputs etc.

So yes, recommendation is not to check-in these files to version control. We make a ignore list of these files for our out of the box version control sysytems like GIT, TFS etc."

****************************************

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[amie68]

When I took a fresh copy earlier in this thread, it was the current version of all files.

To resolve, I had to look through the incremental history in the source control server. Once I knew that snippetcategories.xml controlled the display of snippets in the snippet pane, I could narrow my search to just looking for changes in that file. I found the file where the corruption happened - then backed up another version to one that included all snippets. I downloaded this version (from about a month ago) and replaced that file on my PC. This corrected the issue. Then, when I committed/pushed files to the repo server, the source control was once again correct.

If someone has this issue and does not have access to incremental backups on a source control server, they could edit that snippet xml file manually and then replace it in their project to resolve.

My hope is that a combination of updating to version 4 and replacing with a clean file will keep this from happening again. Only time will tell 🙂

As to the last part of your reply - this file is in settings, not .rh. It has to be checked-in to version control as it used by anyone that works in this file.

[Peter Grainge]

So simply an older version. Understood and thanks for clarifying.

Yes I understand the snippetconfiguration file needs to be checked in. I was simply quoting Adobe to point out that the .rh folder and its folders/files should not be checked in.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Amebr]

With source controlled projects, it might also be worth manually checking out all files before opening a project in an new version of RH. This would ensure all files are writable immediately, in case there was some lag or network glitch when RH was trying to check out individual files, causing some corruption.

[amie68]

I can see this when using Sharepoint - used to use that platform for source control. We use Azure Repos now, and files aren't checked out. You pull to get changes when you open, commit and push when done. Just throwing that out there for folks who use a source control that doesn't check out files.