WebHelp fine with external links, but AIR output isn't.

Report · Apr 22, 2009

Sorry for the repost, but I did not get any eyeballs by posting this in the Adobe AIR or Other Single Source layouts forums. Hoping to get some experts' opinions here.

I have this problem with using the AIR packager for RH7 as well as RH8. Please advise.

My RoboHelp project has a bunch of links to external files such as XMLs, HTMLs, JAVA, etc.(some are local files that I add later to the WebHelp output while others are HTTP links). When I generate the AIR output, these links do not work. The link is clickable, but when clicked, the content of the external file just does not load. I checked that the files do exist, so it's not an issue about missing files.

The generated WebHelp output works absolutely fine.

How do I resolve this? It seems the AIR packager was designed to ignore external links. Is it absolutely uncommon to have external links in a RoboHelp project?

Thanks,

K

Report · Apr 22, 2009

Hi K

Sorry, but your logic is wrong. Those that are able to help are indeed monitoring all forum categories.

I think the issue here is that we are all a bit stumped. AIR is a new breed we will have to come to terms with.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Apr 22, 2009

Uh, ok. I was just going by the number of Views my posts got. But yes, you are correct, the AIR packager/output is a new thing for RoboHelp. I shall try contacting Adobe's Tech Support.

Report · Apr 30, 2009

hi,

There is a difference in AIR packager and RH8 AIR SSL output. RH8 AIR SSL output is much more feature rich than beta release of AIR packager.

Regarding the question as to what happens to links pointing to external files. AIR as of now does not support opening external files, but to fix this issue, RH8 has a feature, where in, if a user clicks on an external file, the help will try opening that file in the native browser window. which means if a user click on any link pointing to external file types (supported by RH8 AIR Help), the AIR help will open that link in the default browser window.

Following external file types are supported in RH8 --> doc, docx, xls, ppt, pptx, docm, pps, ppsx

this is apart from HTML rendering which is any ways supported by AIR runtime.

I hope this clear all the doubts regarding the external file support in AIR Help Output.

-Praful

Adobe RoboHelp Team.

Report · May 01, 2009

Praful:

Thanks for your reply. So what you are saying is:

RH8 AIR Help (RH8 AIR SSL output) will open external files only if the file extensions are doc, docx, xls, ppt, pptx, docm, pps, ppsx.
RH8 AIR Help (RH8 AIR SSL output) will NOT open external files that I have in my project since their file extensions are html, xml, java.

Just curious: Why do you have this restriction? Do you have plans to remove this restriction in the future? It is just not possible for us to import these external files into our RH project, so any work around would be appreciated.

Regards,

K

Report · May 04, 2009

hi,

To rephrase it, RH AIR output let AIR browser render every file type except doc, docx, xls, ppt, pptx, docm, pps, ppsx (these files are opened in external browser window). It means HTML/XML willl open in AIR browser.

Java is not supported in AIR as of now so there is no workaround for java in AIR 1.5. But I hope this will be fixed in next AIR release.

I hope this clear all the doubts.

-Praful

Report · May 07, 2009

Hi Praful:

Thanks for patiently replying to my queries. I think what's lost in our discussion is that my issue is happening because my HTML, XML, JAVA and TXT files are external to the RH project. That is, they are not imported in the RH8 project (this isn't an option for us), so these files are later on manually added to the generated output. Since the directory structure is consistent with the external hyperlinks that are defined, I expect them to work. I am using the RH8 AIR SSL output.

The WebHelp output works fine. That is, the internal HTML files (that are a part of the RH8 project) correctly open in the right-side frame. And when I click on any external hyperlink, the appropriate HTML, XML, JAVA, or TXT file opens in a new Web browser window/tab because that's how the hyperlink properties were defined. I was expecting the exact same behavior with the AIR ouput generated using RH8 AIR SSL output.

In my AIR output only internal HTML files (that are a part of the RH8 project) correctly open in the right-side frame. All external hyperlinks to HTML, XML, JAVA and TXT do not render anything at all. I tested external links such that I had some hyperlinks that were defined to open the content in the righ-side frame and some that were defined to open up a new window/frame. All fail...even HTML that you said works fine cannot be rendered since it's a link pointing to an external file.

One more thing, we do not want XML or JAVA files to open in an XML editor or an IDE respectively. They should just open up for reading in any medium. Isn't this possible with AIR? I'm asking since you wrote JAVA is not supported in AIR as of now.

I hope I have correctly explained everything, but if you have questions let me know.

Thanks,

K

Report · May 07, 2009

Hi Kutra

Have you tried using a Redirect topic for these? I'm curious if that may be a workaround for you.

To create a Redirect Topic:

Create a new topic in RoboHelp.

Edit the HTML code.

In the HTML code are a few tags that begin with the word META.

You want to insert a new line that looks like this:

Note that you would only insert a single line. I listed what it might look like for three different files.

The position of the tag shouldn't be important. However, sometimes I find that I do have to play a bit with exactly where I insert it in order to coax RoboHelp into accepting it. I've never noted a "magick" position that works every tiime through. I really wish RoboHelp offered an option that says "leave this code alone!".

Please try that and see if it is successful or if it fails miserably.

Cheers... Rick

Report · May 07, 2009

Hi RoboWizard:

Thanks for your suggestion. However, creating a "redirect" topic isn't an option for us since we have several of these external hyper links. But I did try this out to test your theory and in the hope that it would help someone else maybe. I created redirect topics for external files that had extensions DOC, HTM, JAVA, XML and DTD. So "redirect" topics were internal topics created in RH8 with META tags that pointed to external files. Here are the results:

In RH8 WebHelp output, the redirect works absolutely fine. But then, it worked previously without creating the redirect topics. I tested this again only to make sure that my redirect topics were correctly set up.
In RH8 AIR output, the redirect did not work at all for DOC, HTM, JAVA and DTD. After clicking the external hyper links, the (internal) redirect topics were displayed but redirecting to the external file did not happen.
In RH8 AIR output, the redirect worked for XML, but only partly. That is, the redirect was successful since the name of the external XML file was displayed, but the file showed up as blank. That is, AIR was unable to render the XML content.

So because of these weird results in RH8 AIR output, I thought let's create a "redirect" topic that would redirect to an internal HTM topic. So no external hyper links, no external files...everything self-contained within the RH8 project. Here's what I found:

In RH8 WebHelp output, the redirect worked absolutely fine. I tested this to make sure that my redirect topic was correctly set up.
In RH8 AIR ouput, the redirect worked absolutelt fine!

So after these tests, I believe we can conclude that RH8 AIR SSL Output cannot successfully handle hyper links pointing to external files. Would you agree?

(Update😞 A nugget I forgot to mention in my previous posts. The behavior with XML files (see #3 test result above) is identical to what I see when I don't use redirect and instead just use an external hyper link (see post #6 in response to Praful Jain). Basically, RH8 AIR can locate an XML file even if it is external to the project, but in both approaches, AIR does not render the XML content.

Thanks,

K