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I am decoupling online help from our product-- it is important that the help version number (my online help, not the RH version:) be embedded in a manifest file that is extracted from a string within a topic. I am open to work-arounds too as long as the build number can also be picked up from the manifest text file by an external application.
Does anyone have any experience with this or ideas if it will work and if it could be integrated as part of the build compilation moving forward?
Thanks!
AFAIK there's no manifest file creation mechanism built into RH - the generation mechanism just creates a folder full of JavaScript, css and HTML files - there's nothing to extract something from an RH topic and stick it in a txt file unless you do it manually and include (or copy it) into your \!SSL!\ output folder.
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Not really a RH question - more of a question to whatever you plan to use to package your help files up with.
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I am not decoupling from RH--I expressed that poorly. The RH help build is being decoupled from the company product. If I were taking my html files and moving away from RH no I would not be asking this question in an RH forum.
I am asking if anyone has done this and asking the RH HTML community if anyone has experience with this type of operation within ROBOHELP. Architects here are asking me if RH supports this type of manifest/possibly regex operation in the compilation of the RH HTML build.
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AFAIK there's no manifest file creation mechanism built into RH - the generation mechanism just creates a folder full of JavaScript, css and HTML files - there's nothing to extract something from an RH topic and stick it in a txt file unless you do it manually and include (or copy it) into your \!SSL!\ output folder.
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What is it you are trying to achieve with this manifest file? Who wants it and why?
See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.
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The goal is to create a manifest file so that our build system can also use this same txt file to build the version string into the war file name. That string (ex. "3.3a") would 1. Be displayed in a robohelp topic after picking it up from the manifest file and 2. used by build system (to name) the deployable war file [this part will obv be handled on the our product side of things].
I believe that the solution, as suggested by Jeff_Coatsworth is to simply manually create a folder and .txt file and place it in the \!SSL!\ folder, and manually update it there and in the topic text. I *might be* over-engineering the process.
I knew that there was not a feature to do this, I was just wondering if anyone had done anything like this before and if there was a script out there or best practice around it.
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I don't think many people have done it - btw, what system are you using for your build/installation process? I'm in the process of evaluating new ones for both our software and help files.
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We use Jenkins for the build process and it's a Java application.
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If you simply want the version of your help to always be easy to locate, you could add it to the Project Title so that it is always shown on the browser. Alternatively you could create a variable and put it in all topics. Both would be easy to update when the version changes. Would that not work from the help side?
As to the developers I am sure you could then find a reliable way of giving them access to the version. Maybe make it part of the RoboHelp project folder name?
See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.