Invalid HTML tag - Is this true? Child .chm files cannot have underscores in name?

Question

I’ve been having the following problem:
file mk:@MSITStore:  … xxx.chm::/xxx.hhc contains an invalid HTML tag
In more detail what happens:
You click on the .chm file to open it and you get a dialog with an error message:
The file mk:@MSITStore:E:\p4_work\1663\isentris\isentris\end-user\trunk\src\Symyx_Isentris\!SSL!\M icrosoft_HTML_Help\Symyx_Isentris.chm::/Symyx_Isentris.hhc contains an invalid HTML tag
There is an OK button and when you click that, then the .chm file opens just fine.
All child .chms open fine when I click on them.
This merged help project worked fine until I upgraded from RH X5 to RH7. I hadn’t changed anything. Then I started reading the forum (RoboHelp HTML Help).
What I’ve done so far:·         Upgraded all help projects from RH X5 to HR7.
·         Regenerated all .chm files, added them again to parent help project’s TOC.  Child .chm files open fine.
·         Regenerated a new parent .chm.
So, I see that one of Colum's answers in another thread was to make sure that none of the child .chms had underscores in the title.
>>>>>>>>>> !!!!!!!!   you mean that RoboHelp now does not accept underscores in .chm titles? Please don’t let it be so.
Also, several people said that they solved the problem like this:
·         “You will get this message if your merged CHMs are not in a book in your merged TOC. Check that. “  You mean I have to associate a book icon with each child .chm in the parent’s TOC?
·         My guess is that the merged project should be placed inside a book in the main project's TOC. You'll just have to rearrange the subprojects TOCs so you don't have books inside books.
What does “in a book” mean? See my attached jpegs. The child project’s TOC is in book form  … within the child project. However, in the parent project’s TOC, the child projects are shown with that merged symbol … kinda looks like a very angular G. Should I create books that link to destinations? Is that what I should do in the parent project’s TOC? Somehow that doesn’t look like it’s going to work – I looked at both dialogs – link and no link – neither one looked like it would work.
Thanks so much for your help!!

Answer 1

When you have a directory path in the TOC, that means that the directory structure should match. So for example:
TOC (in parent.chm)
  !SSL!\Microsoft_HTML_Help\symyx_client.chm
  symyx_for_excel.chm
End folder structure: (+ for folder, - for file)
+ Help
   - parent.chm
   - symyx_for_excel.chm
     + !SSL!
        + Microsoft_HTML_Help
           - symyx_client.chm
Now if the symyx_client file shows up okay after the error message, possibly the parent chm file is smart enough to correct for the directory structure not being there, but a file with the correct name existing in the same directory as the parent.
We've always tried to ensure out merge references don't have a path - RH has the annoying habit of requiring the chm file to be copied into the root, but we just delete it after the first build, as it shouldn't need to be there for the actual compile process. In fact, we've had problems with the chm being physically built into our parent chm, drastically increasing the file size and resulting in duplicate and outdated topics in search. We leave the file there for the first build as sometimes the merge doesn't work first go without it; I think it has to do with how it gets added to the hhp file.
To test that our merge works, we just copy a couple of the files into the same folder  (e.g. c:\temp\test) to double-check. We need this process as our clients get different combinations of the total chm files built into our parent.
Something else I've just thought of is maybe there is something strange happening in the actual hhc file. Do you have any topics in that TOC with characters other than a-z, 0-9 and underscore in the filename (in the topic title should be okay, but maybe some particularly odd ones might cause an issue)?
Amber