Importing and exporting XML in RoboHELP

[advanced_author]

Hi Everyone,

As part of a new project I was asked to investigate the possibility of doing the following with RH:

• Import and XML file conatining notes about various screens on a software product
• View and edit the imported XML file as a RH topic
• Apply some style and content changes to the imported notes
• Finally export these in an XML format for our developers to use

So far I tried importing an XML file but could not get it to display in a WYSIWYG style only text and tags.

Please can you advise me how to:

• Import an XML file so it looks like a normal RH topic which I can edit
• Export to XML
• How to view the XML file created in a WYSIWYG view as opposed to the xml code view

Thanks

Steve

[Captiv8r]

Hi Steve

AS XML is a format used primarily to store data, I would be surprised to see that RoboHelp did the slightest bit to help with your goal. Likely it's not going to interpret XML as a topic and allow formatting as it would if the file were an HTM file.

It's my own understanding (which is possibly flawed) that the ability to import and export XML is based on either importing XML to use to create HTM pages for topics, or to take a collection of HTM topics and export them out for repurposing in a different system.

I'll have to leave it at this point and we can hope someone else that has more experience on this aspect will pop in to advise. Perhaps Willam van Weelden?

Cheers... Rick

[Jared Hess]

Rick is right.

Since XML files store data using a tag-based structure, those tags can be anything you want them to be. So browsers won't know what to do with them.

You will need to convert the tags to those recognized by a browser. Here's a reference of supported tags:

HTML Reference

There might be some free Internet tools or utilities that can convert xml into html output. You probably just have to link up the tags in the xml file with the desired html tag.

Alternately, you could do a find and replace on the xml file using a text editor (notepad++ s a good one) once you determine the final tags in your output file.