RH generates invalid file names containing special characters

[Guest]

The Framemaker import fails to produce valid file names in my project. Independent of the setting unter Tools > Options > "Use underscores in filenames", RoboHelp always produces filenames that include quotation marks and Umlauts. French accents also turn up in the file names. As a result, the webhelp output cannot be viewed on the server. Manually editing all topic file names is inacceptable due to the mass and would be the end of the single-source work flow.

Is there a way to force RH to generate valid file names without special characters? It seems absolutely necessary that such a function is present because the titles of imported documents are likeley to contain special characters, such as accents, quotes etc. which must not be used in the generated file names.

BTW, at the same time it would be desireable to get topic titles without underscores because this is what the user sees when he uses the search function of the help.

[Guest]

I wonder whether this forum is attended by Adobe employees. Our problems with invalid characters in file names is evidently a bug:

1. Chapter titles are likeley to contain quotes as well as accents and Umlauts which are a normal part of foreign alphabets.

2. RoboHelp replaces SOME special characters with underscors (e.g. slashes, colans) which shows that it HAS been understood that file names should not contain them. It is only SOME special characters that appear in the file names.

3. A related problem: The topic titles are always identical with the file names, thus they contain underscrores in the same way too. But as the end user sees the topic titles in the search dialogs, it is evident that characters and blanks should NOT be replaced with underscores in the titles.

[Pooja_at_Adobe]

Hello Robert,

Could you please send us a list of those special characters(are they French or German?), which are not replaced with underscores in RH?

Thanks,
Pooja

[Guest]

Hi Pooja,

from what I saw, these were German umlauts (ä,ö,ü), the colon (:), I think brackets created problems too and I do not remember the type but a French accent appeared too and caused problems. As we are in betatesting for RH 8 since yeaterday, I will do a more systematic test and report formally. Who knows maybe the problem was even corrected already.

[DebbieE]

The macron: ē

The name of the software developed by my company includes a macron, so there is no way I can strip it out of our Word docs before linking in RH. If I change the default filename pattern to docName-X, the topic name also changes to docName-X; topic names show up in search results and I can't have my users seeing topic names that have no relation to the topic. I've spent almost 3 days trying to resolve this issue. Why can't RH strip the special characters out of the filenames and leave everything else (topic names, index and TOC entries) alone?

[Peter Grainge]

Your post was marked as Correct Answer but it was not an answer so I have unmarked it.

When you enter a topic title, RoboHelp automatically defaults that name into the File Name field. However you can change it to something else. That does not automatically then change the Topic Title. Should you then change the Topic Title before saving it will default the file name to the same but only when you create the topic. Thereafter the two are independant. The Topic Heading will default to the Topic Title but again that can be changed. So provided the Topic Title and Topic Heading and Topic Title will accept your characters you should be OK.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[DebbieE]

If only RH 11 would allow users to change the File Name or the Topic Title of the HTML files generated by linked Word documents! However both fields are greyed out and can't be edited. The issue is unique to IIS - other web servers will open file names with special characters. There is a server-side work-around (https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/kb/CannotOpenAFileHavingSpecialCharactersInTheFilenameOnI...) but our SysAdmin says that it's too great of a security risk. I discussed this issue for half an hour with Deep from TCS support last week (July 2016) and he couldn't find a work around either. If I import the word doc instead of link then I can change whatever I want, but the document changes too often to import.

https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/kb/CannotOpenAFileHavingSpecialCharactersInTheFilenameOnI...

[Peter Grainge]

It's helpful to post that here so that others see the outcome but have you submitted a Feature Request to get it on the radar?

Please follow this link to request new features.

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authorin'g information

@petergrainge