Is eHelp's copyrighted Javascript in Air help?

Our software application for Linux is distributed with GNU V.2 license which is fully open-source. However, we recently discovered that the current documentation generated by Robohelp contains some eHelp-copyrighted Javascript. This is an issue for us since we are trying to make the application available on various Linux distributions, and they do not allow non-GPL stuff in the distribution.
We also have a Windows application for the same product, and are planning to use Air for the online help.
Can we use Air for the Linux online help? If source code in the deliverable would contain the copyrighted Javascript, is there a work-around?
Thank you,
Linda

Can you use cookies with locally installed programs, which is what AIR help is? Aren't cookies for website only?
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Similar Messages

Launching Air Help from PDF?

Hello all,
We have a AIR help application that is installed with our software. This help app has many bookmarks in it and our application can open it in a context sensitive way.
We are considering creating a "quick start" guide as a .PDF that, instead of being a reference is more of a "how to". However, it would be really nice if we could make links inside that .PDF to launch the AIR Help application in a similar way to our application.
I'm not an expert at Acrobat or AIR, but rather the programmer who wrote the code to launch the help from our application (which is written in C++). Could somebody point me in the direction I need to look in order to launch our AIR Help from the .PDF? I see there's a way to add a javascript link, but all the JS code I've seen seemed pretty cumbersome if one were to attempt to add it to every single contextual link. And given that they are both Adobe products, I feel there must be a more built-in way to do this.
Thanks for your time!
Tim

Hi Tim,
I was wondering if you have figured out how to launch Air Help from a PDF?
I am having to do the same thing but not having much success finding a solution.
Thank you,
Abbey

Linked PDFs do not open in AIR help window

I am creating a help system in RoboHelp 10 and outputting it as AIR help. The help topics include links to several PDF documents, which are stored locally (they are not on a server or Web site). When I click any of the links in the AIR help window, however, the window goes blank; the content from the PDF does not appear. No other windows open, either. How can I get the content from the linked PDFs to appear in the AIR help window? Thanks!

Have you tried including the PDFs in Baggage Files?
I'm not sure that is necessary without testing but it's worth a try. Post back to let us know whether or not that works.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RoboHelp won't output AIR Help

I'm making my first forays into outputting an Adobe AIR help application.The problem is... I can't figure out how to actually output it! I'm attempting to output from RH8, and when I attempt to output, I get a rather unhelpful message: "Adobe AIR Output could not be generated." When I look at the output log, there are no apparent errors:
Starting compilation...
Adobe AIR output preprocessor 8.0.0.203
Compiling C:\Documents and Settings\tforbes\Desktop\Captivate Rollover Proof of Concept\!SSL!\Adobe_AIR\AdobeAIRApplication\Captivate_Rollover_Proof_of_Concept.air ...
Preparing Adobe AIR output...
Finished preparing in 1 sec(s)
Initializing compiler...
Generating Adobe AIR SSL 1.0 (8.0.1.204)...
Processing TOC data...
Processing Index data...
Processing Context-sensitive-Help data...
Updating HTML topics...
[file names redacted]
Finished updating HTML topics in 0 sec(s) : total 11 topic(s).
Processing Full-text-search data...
Finished processing Full-Text-Search data in 1 sec(s)
Applying Adobe AIR SSL 1.0 Template...
Finished applying Template in 0 sec(s)
Processing Mark of the Web...
As far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with my initial setup settings, but since this is my first time trying to get this to work, it's certainly possible.
Any suggestions?

Hi,
Hmmm. i just did an air build and my log looks just like yours.
I have a lot more topics, but not sure why your update says 0 secs?
The only thing that caught my eye was
Updating HTML topics...
[file names redacted]
Finished updating HTML topics in 0 sec(s) : total 11 topic(s).
Do you have a project with more topics that you can test?
I just did an AIR build on a short project that only has only 5 topics with any thing in them but the Titles.
Update of 26 topics took 1 sec. Again the 0. sec in your log looks "hinky" to me.
I have attached my build log for you to see.
Hope that helps
Ciao
Ed

Name of .exe file generated from Air Help

Is there a way to customize the name of the .exe file generated by the Air Help output? I can specify the name of the .air file. But when the Air application is installed, the .exe filename is the same as the help title ("Help Title" field in the Adobe Air dialog box) . This means the help title is used in the title bar of the Air application, on the Start menu and Add/Remove Programs, and in the filename.
I would like to use a shorter, one-word filename. I would expect the name of the .air file to be the name of the .exe file.
I'm generating an Adobe Air application using RoboHelp 8.
Thanks,
- Maura

I assume you are creating the file as a java.io.File object. Under those circumstances you should be able to specify the name and target directory when you save it:File f = new File(directory+System.getProperty("file.separator")+filename);Or, if you have already named it:
f.renameTo("file.txt");Actually, now I look at it, I may have totally misunderstood what you are trying to do there- are you naming it right in the hyperlink?

Embed fonts in AIR Help?

Hello,
Is there any way to embed fonts in AIR Help? I've noticed that fonts used in the Help must be installed on the user's computer for them to be displayed correctly (like with CHM files). I know the pages are just HTML but I thought (wished) that because AIR Help is an application, some magic might be worked in include fonts.
Thanks, Jason

The fonts are whatever you specifiy in your CSS. To the best of my knowledge and without testing, you are reliant on those fonts being installed on the users PC. There is no way of embedding fonts that I am aware of.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RH8, AIR Help - Any way to increase padding in right pane?

Hi all,
My client wants to try the AIR Help format for the next release of their product. They currently distribute it as a .chm. The one pesky issue I'm running into after upgrading to RH8 and generating the AIR Help is that when topics are displayed in the right pane, there isn't enough space (padding) on the left side. The text is jammed up against the divider bar between the left and right panes. This is not a problem if I compile it as a .chm.
I use one master page (template) for all topics and although I tried adjusting the left margin as a workaround, the existing topics don't pick up this change (even if I temporarily set them to use a different master page, and then switch it back). Any other solutions or workarounds are appreciated!
Thanks,
Katie
Katie Carver
Senior Technical Writer
Docs-to-You, LLC
Phoenix, AZ

Hi there
How about this?
Click here to visit the Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Cheers... Rick
Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 within the day - $24.95!
Click here for Adobe Certified Captivate and RoboHelp HTML Training
Click here for the SorcerStone Blog
Click here for RoboHelp and Captivate eBooks

Adobe: Please Give Us An RoboHelp - AIR Help Forum

Hi all,
A client of mine is very interested in the AIR Help format
after I showed them a test project. As with any new format, there
are risks and bugs, and I want to know about as many of them as
possible before I begin a large project with tight deadlines where
I do not have a lot of time to troubleshoot, tweak, and test. I'm
feeling a little frustrated trying to get all of the info I need
and wondering "Is Adobe really behind this new format or not?"
(Yes, I have the RoboHelp Packager PDF.) Those who are kind enough
to jump in and investigate this new format are posting sometimes in
General, sometimes in HTMLHelp, sometimes in the AIR developers
forum, etc. (I see a link on grainge.org to a RoboHelp Packager
forum that isn't working...perhaps a Beta forum that's now closed?)
On that note, THANK YOU, Peter Grainge, for taking the time to
provide very helpful information about AIR Help on your site...
Most of you reading probably will not recognize my name simply
because over the years, I have found almost all of the answers I
needed by searching prior posts and putting Peter's solutions to
work in my own projects. Now I hope to be able to give back to this
community if I delve into AIR Help, but we all need one place to
post :-)!
Sincerely,
Katie Carver
Senior Technical Writer/Consultant
Docs-to-You, LLC

Ask and ye shall receive...
Helpful and Handy Links
RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form
Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7 or 8 within the day - $24.95!
Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training
SorcerStone Blog
RoboHelp eBooks

AIR Help - Why is Print Sequence Disabled?

Hi all,
I have experimented with a copy of a client's Help system in
both RH7 w/packager and the RH8 trial, generating output to the AIR
Help format. After generating & installing the .air package,
and viewing the new .exe help file, I notice the following: Click
the dropdown next to the Print icon and three options are listed
(Print this page, Print sequence, Print entire Help). No matter
what is selected below, Print sequence is always unavailable
(grayed out). This is the case when I generate with either version.
Am I missing something in the settings?
Thanks,
Katie
Katie Carver
Senior Technical Writer
Docs-to-You, LLC

Hi all
In addition to what my colleague and fellow Adobe Community
Expert Peter suggested, I read this thread and am inferring that
perhaps Katie doesn't fully understand how Browse Sequences work.
Particularly in WebHelp. So I see this could impact the operation
of things.
Please allow me to try and explain.
A Browse Sequence is merely a pre-defined path that traverses
two or more topics so that they are presented in a logical order.
You said that you created a Browse Sequence using the Auto-create
feature so I'm assuming you now have several different sequences.
This is because until you change the number of Book levels, you end
up with several sequences. If you wanted a single sequence that
spanned all of the TOC, you would need to auto-create the sequence
and specify 0 as the book levels.
That bit will hopefully help you sort the sequence creation.
Now let's address the sequence *USE*.
When you have created WebHelp output by clicking File >
Generate Primary Layout (assuming the primary is WebHelp) you see
four or five intermediate dialogs that allow you to specify
different parameters that govern how that layout is created.
Typically on the second dialog is an option for Browse Sequences.
So once you have created a sequence, you have to remember to enable
it in WebHelp in order to see it work. At this point, I'm thinking
you *MAY* have done this but it isn't clear. After all, if you have
never used them before, you may not have realized you needed to do
this step. You also may not realize how the sequence appears in
WebHelp.
So once you have defined the sequence and told WebHelp to
present it, you generate and the sequence is presented as two icons
in the "Navigation mini-toolbar". The little toolbar that sits
majestically perched at the top of the TOC, Index, Search, Glossary
and just below the main toolbar. So here's why you may think it's
not working in WebHelp. The behavior of the Previous and Next icons
will change depending on which topic you are viewing. If the topic
presented in the Topic pane is part of a sequence, one or both of
the buttons will be enabled. If the topic is the *FIRST* topic of a
sequence, the Next button will be enabled but Previous will not be.
This is because you cannot go further backward. The topic begins
the sequence. Assuming there are more than two topics in the
sequence, you click the Next button and the next topic in the
sequence is presented in the topic pane. This should then cause the
Previous button to enable and work when you click it. Once the last
topic in a sequence is presented, the Next button disables as you
cannot go further.
The bottom line here is that if you are displaying a topic
that is not part of a browse sequence, bot buttons will be disabled
and dead to the user.
Now shift focus to AIR Help. It seems reasonable to me that
if the AIR Help is presenting a topic that isn't part of the Browse
Sequence, just as WebHelp disables both the Previous and Next
buttons in the mini toolbar, AIR Help may disable the Print
Sequence feature.
Now that it's hopefully clear how this all works, please
ensure you are displaying a topic that is included in a Browse
Sequence and see if you now have an available option. I'm not
looking at AIR Help at the moment as I have no access to RoboHelp
8. So you might be seeing a bug or you might find it now works as
designed. Only you can say for certain.
Keep in mind that when you create AIR Help, I believe it has
to be installed after created in order to see it work. So just to
be on the safe side, after you ensure things are configured as
outlined, try generating to a different output file name, then
install and test that.
Whew... Rick

Air help - autoupdating procedure

Hi all, another question concering Air Help - I did not succeed in using the autoupdate function allthough it seems rather simple. I set the path to an XML file in the output options and when I later publish a newer project to that location (i.e., with a higher version number) then the original help should detect that it is outdated - but it dos not work for me. The name and location of the set XML file is correct.
I used a local file path, and of course I use the view option within Robohelp rather than a full installation becasue I am no admin and cannot install an Air application on my system. Is it possible that the update function sinply does not work with the "view" function of RoboHelp?

What I did to get this working was the following ..
In the properties for the Adobe Air single source layout, under Settings, General, Help Settings, enter a Version number, this number will be recorded in the xml file below.
In the properties for the Adobe Air single source layout, under Settings, View, set Enable Auto Update, enter the path to the xml file and also state the name of the xml file, like the the following: http://support.wedsite.com/Air_Update/autoupdate.xml
Generate the output and in the generated SSL directory for the Air output will not only be the .air file but also the .xml file.
Here is an example generated .xml output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<update-settings helpid="MyHelpFilePS" version="1.0.048" location="My_Help_File_Product_Support.air" />
Place both of these files (.air and .xml) onto the Web or file server as defined in the path above.
To test:
Install the newly generated Adobe Air application. Close the application
Re-generate the SSL output again but before doing so update the version number. Place this updated version of the .air and .xml onto the Web or file server as defined in the path above.
Restart the newly installed Adobe Air application and it should go out and look for the .xml file at the Web or file server as defined in the path above. If it finds an update you will receive a message that an update is avilable, like the following:
If you say yes, it will start to download the updated .air file, and you will see this by a message stated that it's "downloading an update" next to 'About' in the bottom of the air application. Then the application will close, auto-install the update and then re-launch the air application.

How to setup air help auto-update

RH8 HTML.
Im fiddling around with the AIR Help file and trying to get the auto update working.
So far I have the comments syncing perfectly across users with a shared folder on our network.
I'm now publishing the air file to a shared folder again where everyone can get the file and where the update.xml file is sitting.
so I have this looking structure.
\\networkdrive\Adobe_AIR\Generic_AIR\AdobeAIRApplication\Help File.air
\\networkdrive\Adobe_AIR\Generic_AIR\AdobeAIRApplication\Help_Update.xml
I set everything in RH Air output to publish to these folders, and I can see the newest files each time I do, I change the version numbers from 1.28 to 1.29, and this is reflected in the update.xml file where the version number has changed.
but when I go into the actual instaleld 1.28 version and use the Check Now feature to look for the latest 1.29 which has over written the 1.28 files in the shared folder, it finds nothing.
I cant find any way to manually point to where the update should be found.....do the update files have to sit in the same install directory or something? How does this work....aarrrgghhh
Is there another things I'm not doing?
Thanks.

Hi Nick
Good to hear that you are looking into AIR and Comment syncing is working fine.
Regarding the AIR auto update feature, you need to do the following
While generating the AIR file, you need to specify the update XML file location in AIR Help SSL generation option shown in the image below.
Now install this AIR file, and update the update.xml file and new version of AIR file, and it should work fine.
So the point is the installed air file need to know where to look for the update.xml file, it can be shared folder or a website.
Hope this will help you.
-Praful

The Captivate 4 installation hung on "Air help viewer"

the Captivate 4 installation hung on "Air help viewer", the process is "Adobe AIR application installer.exe"
if I kill this process, captivate go on install and finished without error.
Does anyone has idea for this?

I found new clue here.
"*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=* =*=*=*
Installer Operation: InstallThirdPartyPayloadOperation
*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= *=*=*
Installing third party payload
Third party application path:\\pc0118133\c$\SVN\trunk\CLIENT~1\AD1459~1\EXTERN~1\1\payloads\AdobeCaptiv ateReviewer-mul\AIRApplicationRunner.exe
CommandLine: -airAppPath AdobeCaptivateReviewer.air -airRuntime "Adobe AIR Installer.exe" -desktopShortcut -eulaAccepted -location "C:\Program Files\Adobe" -programMenu -silent
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:15 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:17 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:19 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:21 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:23 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:25 2010 INFO
Checking bootstrapper progress
[     460] Fri May 14 11:27:27"
I check the install log of captivate,
it seem as it is keep on checking something during install payload "Air" and nver pass unless I kill the process of Adobe AIR Application Installer.exe
Or, do anyone know how to exclude AIR viewer?

Update Adobe AIR help content without necessity of installation for users???

Hello there,
I want to make our manuals available as Adobe AIR help applications. Unfortunately for our users it is not possible to regularly install these applications. Therefore I decided to generate a help viewer as AIR file and help content as RHA file ("help content only" ssl option). So admins only once have to install an initial AIR file. Afterwards users are able to replace help content to update help files.
I proceeded in a similar way as described here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2010/07/merging_multiple_helps_in_air_help_output.html
In principle this is a good solution - but here is my problem:
Help content itself already consists of different projects (merged projects). Merged projects unfortunately cannot be generated with "help content only" ssl option.
Anyone has got an idea how to satisfy all my conditions:
- Customers only once have to install an AIR file
- Afterwards help content can be updated by replacing files (without installation)
- Help content itself contains merged projects .
Generate different outputs (RHA files) for the merged projects is not a possibility. The merged projects with regard to content belong to ONE single manual - I'm not talking about different manuals. So users should be able to search the whole manual and so on ...).
Thank you so much in anticipation!
Melanie

It has always irritated me that the blog you refer to uses the term "merged help". It is not merged help, it is simply a collection of outputs where the user can select the one they want.
My site does have instructions for a true merged AIR Help output but that will not achieve your objective of one install. Sorry but I don't think what you want can be achieved.
http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/merging_webhelp/merging_method_rh9.htm#air
The method is the same for Rh10.
Please feel free to use the Contact page on my site.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Air Help not a valid option for some projects?

RH9, multiple projects that are currently deployed as merged webhelp.
I opened the project we use as the 'parent' project and was able to change the output to Air, no problem. But when I try to open the other projects that we use as 'child' projects, it doesn't allow us to select Air. The option doesn't even display in the output drop-down.
Is there a setting we need to change? My understanding was that Air can do merged help projects and does them in the same manner as our existing format, Webhelp.

You are talking about browser based AIR help and you are saying that in RoboHelp 9 you are not seeing AIR as an option to create the layout?
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Javascript in AIR, bind function undefined

I'm creating an HTML/Javascript based AIR app, but getting the error that 'bind' (a standard JavaScript function) is undefined.
Since bind is being used in a 3rd party library this pretty much kills my hopes of using it unless I wanted to hack through that library, which I don't. I guess this is because the version of WebKit embedded in AIR is not able to support bind for whatever reason (I'm publishing to AIR 13.0)
But I'm wondering if the correct approach is to create an ActionScript based app that uses StageWebView? Is StageWebView using a more updated version of WebKit?
Thanks

if I place all of the commands into a single <script> element, the problems go away but it's quite a limitation to only have one document.write in the document. I plan to eventually script re-formatting of the Metadata data so that I can do something like this:
<p>version name</p>
<p>caption line 1 [return]
caption line 2</p>
<p>aperture: f2.8</p>
becomes:
<h3 class="version_name">version name</h3>
<p>caption line 1</p>
<p>caption line 2</p>
<p class="exif">aperture: f2.8</p>

Is eHelp's copyrighted Javascript in Air help?

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