Two .chw questions: HTMLHelp not generating, deleting old entries

[cloudwoman23]

Hi,

Here I am for my twice-yearly questions. I appreciate you folks being here.

I'm generating HTMLHelp with RH 9, to which I recently upgraded. The project I'm working on has a master project in which the contents and indexes of multiple separate help projects are gathered together. This version is a simple rollover from a previous version that was in RH 8. I've generated the chm files, sent them to the developers, and the files are included in our software product. (Development does nothing with the files other than pull them into the software merge.) Now people are testing the software, and when they open the main help file and click the index tab, the index doesn't appear. However, it works fine for me -- I cannot replicate the problem. I noticed that, after I installed the software and opened the help index, the .chw file for the master project appears in the program folder with the current date. The testers have confirmed what I suspected, that the .chw file is not present in their installations. As I said, this is a rollover project (over many years and many versions of RH). I haven't seen this occur before. Why isn't the .chw being created for the testers? I'd guess that having RH 9 installed on my computer is the difference between us, but I'm not sure.

Here's my second .chw question. There's an entry for an old topic in the index that's still appearing, even though the topic was removed long ago. When I click the entry, the topic is displayed somehow, but I have no idea where it's coming from. I've searched every file in every folder of the project and the topic isn't there (although it is present in older versions of the project, which are in completely different folders). I've been through all the options in RH that I could think of. What other files might RH be hanging onto where this could be stored? I have problems like this so infrequently that I forget from one incident to the next how the files work together and which ones do what.

Thank you,

Beth Pickett

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Beth.

There are a couple of things to check here. Firstly, does the master project contain at least one index keyword? If not, the index tab won't work. The other thing to check is whether a search returns any results from the child projects. If not, my guess here is that the .CHW file is a red herring. I bet that the parent project's .HHP file has hard coded path references to the child references. You can see this if you locate your master project's HHP file and open it in Notepad. Near the bottom is a [MERGED FILES] section. Does it have a path looking something like this:

C:\Source\ProductA\Deliverables\chma.chm

C:\Source\ProductA\Deliverables\chmb.chm

etc.

If so, this needs to be changed to just a path of chma.chm and chmb.chm. The fact that the path is there, and the fact that it is where the CHMs are located on your PC, means that you will never see the problem faced by the others. So amend the HHP file and then recompile the project. This should be done in each of the projects.

As for the rogue index entry, try deleting the project's .CPD file before recompiling.

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The RoboColum(n)

@robocolumn

Colum McAndrew

[cloudwoman23]

Colum,

Thanks for the reply. I opened each .hhp and reduced the paths down to only the file name where the [MERGE FILES] section existed. Recompiled everything. I moved the files to my other computer (non-RH) to see if I could replicate the testers' problem there, and indeed I could and in a more extreme sense. The tester could see all of the Contents tab entries, just not the index. In my test, after applying your edits, I get neither the Contents nor Index. For fun, I copied a .chw over there, too, to see if the .chm would use it, but no. The curious thing to me is that this hasn't been a problem before. These projects and their settings haven't changed significantly in a few years, other than whatever RH does when it converts them to a new RH version.

I also deleted the .cpd from each project before recompiling, and the rogue index entry is still there. <?>

I opened a ticket on this with Adobe, and they've said they'll call. Of course, this stuff always happens in a time crunch! I think I'm going to have to back-pedal and handle this particular deadline with RH 8, but others are right behind it.

Beth

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

Editing the HHP in RoboHelp 9 is a bit more tricky. See Item 13 at http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh9/using_rh9.htm.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[cloudwoman23]

Hi Peter,

To meet the deadline I was working on when I originally posted, I had to go back to RH 8. Other things have encroached since, and now I've finally had time to get back to this. I followed Karen's steps in the "Merged CHMs - Absolute Path Problem" document on your site, and the process worked great.

However, seems that as long as you make the necessary deletions in Karen's steps 1-3, copy the child .chm files to the root of the parent, and start the .xpj from the root of the parent, you'd be okay, wouldn't you? Meaning, if you already have a TOC file that contains entries for your merged projects, you can skip step 5. Or am I oversimplifying? Or maybe your instructions state that and I didn't see it. I followed the steps exactly and created a new "scratch" TOC, but then neglected to select it as the default before I compiled. When I opened the master .chm, it used my usual TOC without complaint and displayed the index properly, much to my delight.

Again, many thanks. In the process, the outdated, stubborn index entries got cleaned out, too, so I'm double-happy.

Beth

[Peter Grainge]

Those are the steps for fixing the setup when things are broken. Thereafter it may well be possible to skip some steps given certain conditions that will vary from person to person. Feel free to amend the instructions to suit yourself now you have the show on the road again.

Good to know it worked for you.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge