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T
thegup55
Known Participant
November 19, 2008
Question

WebHelp Compile Won't Display

  • November 19, 2008
  • 8 replies
  • 2650 views
Set WH as primary layout, tried both with no skin and skin, no server ID'ed. Compile dialog says succcessful, but no project name.htm found under SSL/WebHelp dir. Using RH 5.0.1 and IE 6.0.29 and MSWord 2003. Project compiles and displays perfectly as .chm. Anybody have an idea??
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8 replies

RoboColum_n_
RoboColum_n_
Legend
November 21, 2008
I wonder if it may be worth creating a completely new webhelp project and generating the output with just the single default topic inside it. Maybe this would pinpoint where the error is. As none of the six projects work and they have been iherited, have we established that any project works?
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 21, 2008
Yes I tried this yesterday with the same result.
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 21, 2008
and the permissions?

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T
thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
I have to go for the day but I appreciate everyone's input. Thanks.
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 21, 2008
Get your write permissions checked.

Also check you have admin rights attached to your profile.

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T
thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 21, 2008
Finally we get there. With all versions before RH7 you must have local admin rights attached to your profile to run all the RH functionality.

Your choices are either that your rights are changed or you use RH7. RH7 requires admin rights to install but it can be installed by your IT guys. To run it you only need ordinary user rights.


Thanks for your patience. That solution is the worst of all possibities. To get admin rights here is virtually impossible and to get an upgrade for any software that "still works" is almost as difficult. My only chance is that this user who is paying for my time can pressure mgmt for the upgrade as he seems to get sexually arroused over these browse sequences which is why this whole webhelp thing came up. No one is going approve or execute placing that activex.dll on 250 users machines to make it work in .chm. I appreciate your help very much. Cheers.
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
Peter, i did everything you said. Emptied the dir, changed start page to index.htm. View Result = No success and there is no file named index.htm found in the DIR.
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
C:\WebHelp\XLeRate.htm

I did as suggested and created webhelp dir under c: and pointed to the start page file (XLeRate.htm) which for some reason gets named XLeRate_1 in the DIR.

I appreciate your help and don't take this wrong, but I have done this before. When I click "view" I get the start page with whatever skin I selected which has a TOC and all the others NAV features in the properties. Now when I click view, nothing happens except that the dialog box goes away and the project mode is staring back at me. This is not normal behavior.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2008
I did as suggested and created webhelp dir under c: and pointed to the start page file (XLeRate.htm) which for some reason gets named XLeRate_1 in the DIR.

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

That happens when you give the start page the same name as the default topic. They are two quite different things. Give them the same name causes confusion. Go to the wizard, make the start page C:\WebHelp\index.htm.

If View Result still does not work, go to that folder after generating (and empty it before you start) and double click index.htm.

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RoboColum_n_
RoboColum_n_
Legend
November 20, 2008
No. Webhelp is a collection of files - not a single file. The Index.htm file (or whatever you call it) is just the entry point to it. If you open the XLeRate_.htm file, doesn't your help file open?

BTW your path is way WAY too long. Most of us have the source files off the C: drive - mine is C:\RHSOURCE). Also why is there an underscore in the file name. Is it needed?
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
1) I can open the XLeRate.htm from the DIR but only as a standalone file. When I click vew result from the successful compile dialog, nothing happens. I

2) I use the default path that Robohelp creates. It seems to work fine for the other 6 projects (.chms) that reside there.

2) I removed the _ as it is not needed).

Thanks
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
No good. C:\WebHelp\XLeRate.htm returns nothing for "view result for XLeRate.htm which is appears as XLeRate_1.htm when viewed in the DIR after the compile. Any idea why it's name gets changed? There is no other file with that name. Makes no sense.
H
Hey__Steve
Participant
November 20, 2008
For what it's worth (as I gather that your move to WebHelp is to use browse sequences), you might check my recent post "Browse Sequences in WebHelp -- Not Readily Apparent?" dated 11/04/08. Best wishes!

Steve
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
Thanks but my problem is much deeper than not getting browse sequences to display. I can'r get anything to display at all
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2008
WebHelp is not compiled. Microsoft HTML help is compiled into a CHM file. The two are quite different.

Also you should not have projects and outputs in Program Files.

Create a folder called C:\webhelp just to test and point the first page of the wizard to that folder. See what gets generated there.

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RoboColum_n_
RoboColum_n_
Legend
November 20, 2008
Check the properties of your single source layout folder. The output directory will list the location of the output and as Leon says the start page should be there. Are you saying it isn't?
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
It's there. The output path is C:\Program Files\RoboHelp Office\RoboHTML\XLeRate Online Help\!SSL!\WebHelp\XLeRate_.htm and XLeRate_.htm is there. Doesn't webhelp generate a compiled project file ala .chm. All is see are the images and topic files and a few misc files.
MergeThis
MergeThis
Inspiring
November 19, 2008
You'll be looking to launch the .htm file that appears as the Start Page in the first field of the first window in the Generation process. (Most Web authors use index.htm as the default.)

What is the path shown there (it might not be the SSL/WebHelp)?


Good luck,
Leon
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thegup55Author
Known Participant
November 20, 2008
i don't understand what the default topic has to do with the project not compiling. Only the topic files and images and a few assorted files appear in the WebHelp/SSL dir after the compile completes. From what I gather there should be a bunch of other files (most importantly the project.htm) created that are not despite the messsage that the compile was successful. Thanks anyway.
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