trying to publish old X5 webhelp pro project using Robo 6

[Guest]

I apologize immediately for this being confusing....Have to provide a bit of background b4 I get to the "roboengine" part of my question.

First - I inherited an old X5 Webhelp Pro help project (CSH) that was published with a web app developed with .NET. The app is still in use but the help hadn't been updated in 2+ years. Without going in to all the "why"s, here is the bottom line.

The old x5 project has been opened in Robo 7 but since then, worked on in Robo 6. Just the usual assortment of content edits, a new template, and such.

All seemed fine until the project started hanging up on me to the point where I could no longer even work on it. Literally, I try to edit one topic and it hangs. Have tried creating new project and reimporting files and some other things with no luck.

So..being up against an immediate and immoveable deadine, I downloaded a trial version of Robo 8 to see if the version issues might be the problem. Project stoped hanging BUT.... now I can't publish using the old publish info. New server, new security , new policies in place. Thought we could just copy the updated files to the existing network folders/structure (where the help was served up from 2 years ago and still should be.) Deleted the old files, kept the folders, and copied the new stuff into the existing folders. Now when we click the CSH help button from the web app here's the message we see:

CONGRATULATIONS! The RoboEngine .NET has been successfully created. To get started using RoboEngine you need to publish a project.

I don't even know where to start troubleshooting this. Don't know what version of roboengine is out there or where it is. .  Anyone have any jumping off points for me? Other than the nearest tall bridge... 🙂

[Peter Grainge]

You cannot use RH6 for a project that has been opened in RH7. The code is very different so some of your problems will be stemming from that. It sounds like whatever got messed up there, did not get cleaned up during the creation of the new project. I think the first thing to resolve is getting a project that will generate WebHelp locally (not WebHelp Pro). Import a small number of topics at a time and generate. Repeat until it breaks and you will know where the problem is, better still it will not break this time.

Then you have the server issue. If you are using RH8, you must use RoboHelp Server 8. Older versions will not do.

Does that sound about right?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[Guest]

Thanks for your fast reply. At this point continuing to use Robo 8 is not ideal as there is no quick way for me to get a non-trial version of it or of Server 8 (big corporate procurement rolls slowly and they are still on 6 here I believe). I can try creating another new project with 6 and importing the topics a few at a time. If that does work and I can gen webhelp output (don't think i need pro anyway as i don't care about feedback reports and such), should I then be able to just copy those output files over to the existing network folder structure (where the old help files currently resided)? Assuming whatever X5 engine I have works with 6 output...

FYI this thing is in Production as of 6am this morning with broken help. If I move quickly I can get the fix into a patch release very soon. Just saying that b/c clearly I need to do whatever I can get done the fastest that works. I've considered generating the whole thing to Word output and importing from that using my Robo 6 but assume that will leave a bigger more time consuming mess to sort out. But maybe not...I dunno.

[Peter Grainge]

You have to decide first between WebHelp and WebHelp Pro.

If it is WebHelp Pro, then I don't think RH6 output works on the X5 engine. There is a post about that somewhere in these forums. If you have to use the X5 engine, then you might have to go back to RoboHelp X5 for production.

If you can use WebHelp, then the engine issue disappears. However, you will need to check the calls to the help are not affected.

I suggest a pretty urgent consultation with the developers.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[Guest]

i don't "need" webhelp pro but because the old X5 project "was" webhelp pro i don't know what the effect is on the help calls, as you also indicate may be an issue. and I don't think using anythinig but 6 for authoring is an option. and the developers don't have a clue as none of them were here when the X5 project was implemented and of course it hasn't been updated in their lifetime. we're all trying to get a clue. quickly!

[Peter Grainge]

I suspect the calls will be the same but it needs to be tested.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[Guest]

Well here's where I am now...

Created a new project in Robo 6 and imported a few topics from my "corrupt" project. Generated Webhelp from those. Sent them to the developer who copied them in to the existing Help folder. Did not clear out that folder first, just copied the files and overwrote any that were already there. Now when I try to display one of the "new" help topics I get a "page not found" error. Previously when we tried clearing the folder first and then copying in the new files, we got the "welcome to robo engine" message. Any more thoughts?

Thanks!!

[Peter Grainge]

The existing folder is known to the RoboEngine so you cannot put the help there.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[Guest]

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand your answer about the existing folder being known to the Robo engine. Don't mean to be obtuse but the Robo engine has always been a great mystery to me. All I know for sure at this point is I can't quickly or easily upgrade the existing engine.  What I don't get is that, if I already had a set of help files (htm and gif files) in a (webhelp) output folder on the server, and in Production the help topics were being pulled correctly from that folder, why can't I just replace those htm and gif files (nothing else) with files having the same names. All I did was update some content and the header image. Didn't add any new help topics or map IDs or rename anything. I would think if Robo engine was pulling topicABC.htm from the server and I replaced topicABC.htm with topicABC.htm, that it should not break anything. Is that not the case?

thx.....

[Peter Grainge]

You have a version of RoboEngine that is designed to handle an output from X5. You are sending it an output from RH6. As well as your topics being updated, when you republished the internal files get changed. Your version of RoboEngine would not understand them even if you generated WebHelp Pro.

The idea was to generate WebHelp to a different folder. It does not matter whether you generate WebHelp or WebHelp Pro from RH6, RoboEngine is not going to understand them. It's like talking to someone in a language they don't understand.