Topics Suddenly Blank

Report · Jun 17, 2009

I'm working in RH7 on a project with three authors. All three authors are working from a local copy with networked backup. Four topics appear blank in our local copies, but are present in the published version and in the backup. All four contain DHTML drop-down hotspots, but other than that are pretty typical HTML files. We attempted to restore the backup copies of those four topics, and the backups appear blank when opened locally, too. This has happened once before, and at some point we lost the content. Help! Anyone know what's going on?

Report · Jun 17, 2009

Hi there

What happens if you restart RoboHelp? I've seen it before where all topics suddenly appear blank and restarting normally fixes it.

If it's always the same topics and it's consistent, something probably went all wonky in the HTML code. Usually you can recover by editing the HTML. You might even find you need to locate the topic in Windows Explorer, right-click and display in a browser. Then copy the content from the browser so it may be pasted back into the RoboHelp editor.

Of course that will likely destroy any DHTML going on. (Drop-downs or Expandos).

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jun 17, 2009

Restarting RoboHelp has no effect, alas. I'll give a shot to editing the HTML and see what happens. Currently, it's the same four files. Previously, we lost another topic in the same manner. Thanks for the response.

UPDATE: HTML mode shows a single paragraph containing a non-breaking space:

Report · Jun 18, 2009

Do you have dropdowns within dropdowns or loads of DHTML in the topics. I have seen cases where this is the case and the topic takes ages to render the info. If you leave it long enough the content will display. Hardly useful to the user but it may be your problem which would give you an idea of what you need to do

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Report · Jun 18, 2009

Nope. I don't have either of those. I have one list of about 8 drop-down hotspots with basic text, tables, and images inside them. I've tried rebuilding this file from a previous version. I tried renaming it and importing a backup copy. I tried deleting all the hotspots from the HTML and recreating them from scratch. It all "seems" to work initially, but when I open the topic again, the body contains one single paragraph tag wrapped around a non-breaking space. I reconstructed all four topics today, cleaned them all up and got them functional, and then the next time I opened the project, back to blank.

Report · Jun 19, 2009

Have you installed all the RH7 patches?

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Report · Jun 19, 2009

Yep. Fully up-to-date. Today I'm going to try killing the hotspots and see if that helps, though I don't see why it would since other topics have hotspots and aren't having this issue.

Report · Jun 19, 2009

Removing the DHTML hotspots seems to be working so far, but that still doesn't make any sense to me. I have other files with just as many DHTML hotpsots (5-10 in a single list containing text, tables, images) that aren't having this issue.

Does anyone know how RoboHelp generates the HTML? I'm wondering if it's having trouble loading the topic on the WYSIWYG side, and assuming that it's blank when I try to switch to the HTML side, and thus coding it as <p> </p>. Any thoughts?

Report · Jun 22, 2009

I don't have access to RH7 but in RH8 dropdowns are coded by adding a <DIV> tag with a javascript reference. Immediiately below is a popup number which contains the actual text, image or table. In RHX5 things work slightly differently in that the <DIV> tag refers to a popup number with the javascript. If you search for that popup number in the HTML you'll find the popup contents. The problem is that all popups are positioned away from the actual DHTML at the top or bottom of the topic HTML.

I am wondering whether the javascript used by these blank topics is different from the others? Try copying the ehlpdhtm.js from another project and see if that makes a difference.

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Report · Jun 22, 2009

Hi there

Usually one gets past the JavaScript/DHTML issue by clicking Tools > Update DHTML Effects in Topics.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Jun 23, 2009

Thanks for the tip, Rick. Do you know what "update" entails?

Report · Jun 23, 2009

Hi there

Sorry, I can't provide a full description of what it does. I'm assuming that it simply amends any existing references to DHTML effects so that they work correctly with the existing version.

Just tossing out a "what if" here. Perhaps the DHTML drop down used some code that slightly changed. Maybe it was referenced as dropDown in earlier scripts and it changes in the newer to DropDown (note the case change). So if something like this were the case, amending the scripts would be necessary.

I'm guessing only one of the RoboHelp developers can tell us what the action is really doing. Anything else is just speculation on our part.

Cheers... Rick