Links between .chm files

[cloudwoman23]

I knew I'd be back with some situation. When last I posted, about three months ago while testing conversion from hlp to chm, I had multiple .chms talking to each other. That was then, this is now. After rollovers to new versions of the help files and now doing chms for real, I can't get links from one file to another to work. (The merged TOC and index, however, work great.) I repeated the steps I did the first time and have reviewed again the many posts here on the subject of external links. Here's what I've done:

• Merged the files in the master project TOC, then deleted the merge entries and merged again just to see if that would help
• All chms are compiling to the SSL folder for the master project
• Verified that all chms are in Baggage Files
• Verified that the Merged Files section in the master project hhp lists only the chm file names with no paths
• Compiled the master project in MS Help Workshop after merge (I read that you have to do that somewhere in Adobe's notes)
• None of the chm files have underscores or special characters in their names
• Deleted and regenerated the master project cpd and hhp files
• Links from sub-chms to the master appear to be coded correctly with no specific location (example: winexp.chm::/Award_Year_g.htm)

These are large files with a lot of topics, but they're not complex mechanically. I'm using RH HTML 7. What am I missing here?

Thanks,

Beth

[Pete_Lees]

Hi, Beth,

All of that sounds fine, except for the Baggage Files bit. The function of the Baggage Files feature is to nominate files that are to be compiled into your Help file, which is not something that you'd want to do in this instance.

What happens when you click a hyperlink from one Help file to another? Do you get an error mssage, or does nothing at all happen?

If you're willing briefly to post a couple of your .chm files on a file-sharing site like RapidShare, that would certainly help us to find the source of the problem quickly.

Pete

[cloudwoman23]

Pete,

Thanks much for the quick response.

I had read something about Baggage Files here somewhere and thought they are relevant, but it's good to know I can cross that off the list. I was going to delete the references to the chms in Project Manager just now and compile to see if it helped, but I can't see how to delete them, so I'll wait until you tell me what to do.

Sorry, I neglected to state the error message in my post. It's "This page cannot be displayed."

It would be great if you'd take a look at some of the files. Should I post the link here?

Beth

[Amebr-ke0mH4]

Importing the child chms into baggage is a long term RH "feature". If you want to merge, you can't stop robohelp doing it.However, we've found it causes problems with potentially compiling the chm files into the master chm, causing the following issues:

1. bloated file size

2. potentially including out of date chms in the help.

3. duplicate topic results in search - some of which show "cannot display page" messages

So once we have the merge set up, we delete the chm files out of the project root directory and delete permantently from source control (this is an option in Visual Source Safe - theoretically there are similar options in other source control applications).

This leaves "broken" baggage files in the Baggage Files list, but doesn't cause any problems with compiling. (If you need to set up your merging again, source control will have a few fits - you just need to manually add the files to the root folder and to source control again.)

I don't know if this will fix your issue, but it certainly won't hurt.

[cloudwoman23]

I recall the term "baggage" from Winhelp, but I guess I never had reason to know what it was. Thanks for that info. If I have more problems, I'll take a look at it again.

[Pete_Lees · Accepted solution]

Hi, Beth,

If you don't want to make the URL public, you can send me a private message via this site.

The error message may indicate that you haven't got the link syntax exactly right. For example, if your topics are stored in subfolders within the target Help file, your hyperlinks need to reflect this. So, a typical hyperlink might look like this:

<a href="ms-its:TargetHelpFile.chm::/TopicFiles/TheTargetTopic.htm">Click to view another topic</a>

To ensure that you're specifying exactly the right path information:

1. Open the target Help file.
   
2. Display the required topic.
   
3. Right-click it and then, on the context menu, select Properties.
   

In the resulting properties sheet, you can copy the path information out of the Address field and trim it as necessary.

Pete

[cloudwoman23]

I knew it was something easy like that - that's exactly it - I got a link to work. I'm not familiar enough with chms yet. I didn't realize that subfolders in the project means there are subfolders within the chm. In my previous testing, when all of this was working, I must have selected different options for some reason.

This raises another question. When I imported all of this from WinHelp, I innocently accepted the default value to save in subfolders. At this point, can I safely reverse that decision and move all the .htms in one place? I use external links for popup glossary terms instead of a .glo file (well, formerly popup--as external links, looks like that's not happening now). The glossary terms are stored in the master project, and there are seven subprojects with hundreds of these glossary links that you and I just determined have incorrect coding. Obviously, I don't want to have to change all of that (not to mention the usual links between the various chms). Can I just take the files out of the subfolders and put them all together, or will that break something else?

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

If you choose to rearrange content, just ensure you do it from inside RoboHelp only. That way it can amend any links and references so things still work in the end.

Speaking from an organizational standpoint, it may behoove you to use folders for organizing content. For one thing, it can actually make the project management process faster. If you begin to create a Hyperlink using dialogs, RoboHelp has to examine the folder the topic is in. And if there are gobs of topics all in the same folder, that can take a long time.

Cheers... Rick

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[cloudwoman23]

Thanks, Rick, point taken. I'll look at it more and see what I think. I don't think speed would be so much an issue here (is 350 topics in a subproject considered "gobs"?), as I tend to avoid the handy dialogs and manually add links. We have a lot of changes to these files from version to version, but it's mostly to the text and not so much adding links. Changing all the existing links for the glossary terms would be tedious, but at least it would be a one time shot.

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

cloudwoman23 wrote:

...as I tend to avoid the handy dialogs and manually add links....

Ouch! You mean you just type them in? That would seem quite error prone if that's the case. My personal favorite way is to drag and drop.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[cloudwoman23]

No way - I haven't typed a link in years, if I ever have at all. By "manual" I just mean any method other than using little wizard or dialog thingies, i.e., drag-n-drop, copy-n-paste. The dialogs are kinda fun, though. Sometimes I use them just to see if they actually work. Most of the time, I'm putting the same link in multiple places, so the dialogs are definitely overdoing it. For me, anyway.