RoboHelp Command Line - Unsolved Issues?

[Jared Hess]

This post is two fold.

1) A question to see if these bugs have been fixed in later versions.

2) And if not, a call to action for the RH staff to fix these bugs.

(Note. I use RH 9 on Windows 7 x64. Maybe these have been fixed, but I doubt it. I seem to remember from my tests of the most recent trial that these still happen. Maybe someone can test for me since my trial is no longer active.)

Background:

We have several help outputs as compiled html helps (chm).

One is our "Core" help.

This Core help is a master help and holds references to several other chms as a merged help system.

To build the Core chm and the non-Core chms, I use batch files (.bat) that use the RoboHelp Command Line  (RHCL) to build the different outputs once a day.  (I like to use batch files over the RoboHelp batch build option, because I can continue to use the same RH project while it builds the help.).

Here's my rhcl code in my batch file:

echo ...building the core help...

rhcl.exe "d:\hg\pcdmisqa\pcdlrn\help\corehelp\core.xpj" -l "CoreChm"  -o "D:\DocProjects\Outputs\common_chm" -g D:\DocProjects\Outputs\common_chm\compilelog_core.txt

Problem 1: Command Line does not merge Index and Search

If I generate our "Core" help with the command line, I cannot search nor use index entries across the merged helps. The Search and Index only show the search and index from Core. Plus odd things happen with additional viewer windows opening. The other chms do reside in the same directory and their TOCs are at least merged.

If I generate that same "Core" help directly from within RH, everything is merged properly. I can see index entries and search across merged helps. The help viewer behaves as expected

Problem 2: Command Line does not respect CSS background image attributes
Our intro page on our Core help has a background image in it. Like a water mark. I use this in the CSS to define it:

body {

    font-family: Arial;

    background-color: #132e35;

    background-image: url(helpimage.png);

    background-repeat: no-repeat;

    background-position: 50% 0%;

}

This does not appear when I build the help in the command line.

If I build it from within RH directly I can see the image fine.

See this video for a demo of what I see.

RoboHelp Command Line Issues - WAIDocumentation's library

Message was edited by: Jared Hess because I accidentally sent it off too soon.

[ninja_cazzle]

We're using RH11. The issues are still unfixed, certainly with respect to the css background image. We've just hit that particular wall firmly head on. If someone on here has any idea of how to get around it, I'm open to ideas!

[ninja_cazzle]

Bug 4082982 created

[steve_norris]

This problem seems to be caused by RoboHelp failing to include the CSS referenced graphic in the CHM file when compiling via a command line.

Adding a hidden topic at the root level and inserting the associated graphic(s) should ensure that they are compiled into the CHM file.

[Captiv8r]

Wouldn't it be just as effective to add the image as a Baggage File?

[steve_norris]

Correct, it would. In retrospect, adding the images baggage files is the cleaner way to achieve this (apart from Adobe fixing the issue). I was going to correct my comments but you beat me to it ☺

[Jared Hess]

Thanks for the help Steve and Rick. I added the image as a Baggage File and it does circumvent my problem 2 in the parent post. Problem 1 is a huge issue still though. I can't build our master (core) help using the command line because of the strangeness I get (not only indexes and searches not merged but topics opening in windows they shouldn't etc).