RH2019.0.10 New UI - Entire contents of topic deleted when moving images

[Erwin.Timmerman]

In my project I have two image folders: images and images_draft. The images_draft is for rough placeholder screenshots that I need to do again, so I can easily find them. Once I have copied the final image over the original image in the drafts folder (with Windows Explorer), I move the finished image within the RH UI from the draft folder to the images folder, so that all links in all topics are updated.

However, today I moved 20 or so images at the same time. One of the topics that had a link to one of these images is now 0 kb. I noticed more topics (and even a complete TOC) disappearing randomly over the past few weeks. Now is the first time I could pinpoint it.

Not sure if this also happens when moving a huge number of topics themselves around. Seems to me like some kind of timing error that just stops writing a file that is being copied. If this can be reproduced this is a SERIOUS bug...

My project is on my local disk, as is RH. So this isn't a network issue. Anyone else noticed topics they thought they had edited being empty?

[Erwin.Timmerman]

To add to this, I have noticed with the topics that weren't deleted that some point correctly to the new image folder, but others don't (so the images are just crosses). In one topic with two images right underneath each other, one was pointing to the new folder and the other wasn't. While the images themselves were both moved to the new folder just fine. Before the images were moved, they were all displaying fine (using the old path) because I checked that after I copied the final images over the draft versions.

I have also noticed that a topic I had moved up a folder which pointed to a snippet, did not update the link to the snippet (it had one ..\ too many in the snippet path).

Bottom line: don't move topics or images around... it ruins your links if you're lucky and your complete topics if you're not. Is this a known bug?

My project contains 1500 or so topics, maybe project size is a factor in this as well?

[Erwin.Timmerman]

No one has this? I would also suspect my harddisk with 0kB files, but I'm heavily using the computer for other work with many file operations as well and haven't noticed any anomalies as of yet outside of RH.

[Peter Grainge]

It's not something I have seen myself but I'm not sure I have your process clear in my mind.

You have a topic with a link to an image that is in images_drafts. Do you mean the user sees a link or the image is showing and is linked in the code?

Assuming the image is showing, you move the image from images_drafts to images and done one at a time, it has worked fine, correct? It only went wrong when you did it with 20 images at the same time.

What worries me is you also had a TOC disappear. That is not an issue I have seen myself or seen reported. It makes me worry about the whole project having something fundamentally wrong, although I can't think what.

I will see if I can replicate the snippets issue.

Meantime, try two things.

1. Create a backup and then delete what is in the .rh folder. It's not the same as the old CPD file but it might help.
2. Update 11 is out today. Try that after creating the backup just in case.

I don't think the size of the project is a factor. Have you looked at any of the reports to see if they throw up any light?

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www.grainge.org

[Erwin.Timmerman]

I haven't noticed it with single movements, but I haven't moved that many single topics or images. This is what I noticed over the past few weeks.

• Topics with images showing, then moving the bunch of images. Result: not all topics show the images because their path hasn't been updated in all topics (and sometimes the image path of one image was updated, and of another image in the same topic it wasn't. Occasionally a topic containing images to be updated ends up being 0kB (empty).
• Creating a new folder and moving all topics from one folder to another one (because renaming a folder doesn't work, I first create a new folder, then move all topics, then delete the old folder after verifying there's nothing left in the old folder), doesn't update all links. The broken links report showed many links in topics themselves as well as in the TOC still pointing to the old folder name.
• The toc that disappeared (or, to be more exact, became empty), was 0kB as well. I don't know if this happened during the moving of images or the moving of topics. But since the internal updating-of-links method is probably the same whether moving images or topics, it probably could have happened in either action. I haven't checked the TOC for weeks while I was busy transfering and moving content, and when I was done I wanted to update the TOC only to find it was completely empty.

Looks to me that some mass-updating action stagnates somewhere and then just abandons the whole process, leaving the file it was writing to at that moment open, or empty. This would also explain why some links get updated while others do not.

I will install update 11 shortly, and will report back if I find anything strange there as well.

[Peter Grainge]

OK. I just created three folders one within the next in a new project. In Topic 3 I added two snippets and generated. Then I moved Topic 3 within RoboHelp to the Level 1 folder and generated again. Still OK, both snippets working.

I'm thinking it would be relatively easy to create a new project (not a copy) with a minimal number of topics but lots of images. Then test bulk moving there. If that replicates what you are seeing then Adobe would want to see it in a bug report.

Let us know.

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www.grainge.org

[Peter Grainge]

I just recalled links breaking with bulk moves was an issue at one point but that was many updates back and it hasn't been reported since. I don't recall the exact scenario but the thread should be here somewhere.

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www.grainge.org