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A
Anonymous
November 6, 2012
Question

whtopic.js and whtbar.js files in RH 10 show no topics

  • November 6, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 663 views

Hello,

I have posted questions about these two files before, and they were resolved, but our QA department and a customer recently noticed that help compiled in WebHelp was not opening. This was discovered after my upgrade to RoboHelp 10 in case that matters.

My webhelp for this project is unusual in that it opens within one of our products and not in a separate browser. This reason necessitated me using an old whtbar.js file with the code changed from "goAvePrev():return false" to "javascript:history.back(1);return false" and the same goes for the next topic code.

We've been getting error messages concerning this file, but we believe we've resolved that at least in the sense that we are no longer getting the error message. However, now the help opens, but we are not seeing any topics (Index, TOC, Search) in the left pane. I'm guessing this has to do with the whtopic.js file. I have tried a couple variations, but neither work.

If anyone has any idea why nothing (except the LNG wording like Find: and Search) will appear in the left pane, I would really appreciate it. I have been trying to figure this out with QA, going through version control to find out when it last worked and compare it to the first time it didn't work by showing build history. So far, that is not working. Again for whatever it's worth, between the help project opening without error it working and not working, I upgraded to 10. That might have anything to do with it, but I fear that it may.

Thanks again.

Kevin 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Willam van Weelden
Willam van Weelden
Inspiring
November 7, 2012

Hi,

The whtopic.js file is used only in topics. It contains all manner of functions for sending calls to the TOC, traversing browse sequences, etc.

The obvious question is: If you use the vanilla whtbar.js, does it work correctly then? In your earlier post you mentioned that you've made changes to the RH10 whtbar.js file. Was amending the function goAvePrev the only thing you changed?

Does your application in any way support debug tools like Firebug? It would be a real help if you could get an overview of the errors that stop the script execution. Also, in what way does this application that shows the help differ from a regular browser? And if it loads a browser in the backround, which one?

Without knowing what is going on, it's hard to tell what is causing the error.

Greet,

Willam

A
Anonymous
November 8, 2012

William,

Thanks very much for your reply. This customer issue was a real conundrum. I spoke with Adobe Support and per their suggestions, I experimented with new skins as well as the auto-created TOC. I also removed all Index and TOC entries and replaced them manually. QA dropped the various incarnations in the WebHelp folder and it looks like a combination of these efforts resulted in a stable help system. We have fixed it for the customer and will do another build of the next version of our product to make sure the help project appears and has a left pane of contents. So far, so good. At first, we got the help to appear without an error, but the left pane was blank. Now we have it working as expected.

Adobe mentioned that the upgrade to 10 might have corrupted the topics. We have found the whtbar.js file that we will always use for this particular WebHelp, and it looks like the other files are OK now. Thanks very much for the help.

Kevin

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