Doctype control in RoboHelp

Hi,
Can someone tell me if there is a way to switch all my RoboHelp HTML files to the doctype 5 automatically?
Is there an option in RoboHelp to select the HTML version? Or any other way to achieve this except for manual editing of the HTML code.
Thanks.
Diana

Hi,
No way to convert to HTML5 doctype. You'll need to manually find and replace the doctypes in your output. Note that WebHelp uses both HTML 4.01 Frameset and XHTML 1.0 transitions. But for valid output, you may need to make some more modifications to the output.
The question is: Why would you want to set the HTML 5 doctype? What would that bring that the XHTML 1.0 doctype can't? Also, IE (except maybe v9) don't support HTML5 so you can't use the HTML5 tags like canvas if you want to support older browsers.
You can use Tools > Options > General > "Convert RoboHelp converted topics to HTML" to convert your output to HTML 4.01 instead of XHTML 1.0 transitional. But that's as far as it goes.
Greet,
Willam

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Extremely slow performance on projects under version control using RoboHelp 11, PushOk, Tortoise SVN repository

We are also experiencing extremely slow performance for RoboHelp projects under version control. We are using RoboHelp 11, PushOk and a Tortoise SVN repository on a Linux server. We are using a Linux server on our IT guys advice because we found SVN version control under Windows was unstable.
When placing a Robohelp project under version control, and yes the project is on my local machine, it can take up to two hours to complete. We are using the RoboHelp sample projects to test.
We have tried to put the project under version control from Robohelp, and also tried first putting the project under version control from Tortoise SVN, and then trying to open the project from version control in Robohelp. In both cases, the project takes a ridiculous amount of time to open. The Robohelp status bar displays Querying Version Control Status for about an hour before it starts to download from the repository, which then takes more than an hour to complete. In many cases Robohelp becomes unresponsive and we have to start the whole process again.
If adding the project to source control completes successfully, and the the project is opened from version control, performing any function also takes a very long time, such as creating a topic. When I generated a printed documentation layout it took an astonishing 218 minutes and 17 seconds to complete. Interestingly, when I generated the printed documentation layout again, it took 1 min and 34 seconds. However when I closed the project, opened from version control, and tried to generate a printed documentation layout, it again took several hours to complete. The IT guys are at a loss, and say it is not a network issue and I am starting to agree that this is a RoboHelp issue.
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Why does it take so long when adding a new topic in RH10 with PushOK SVN
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Thanks Mark

Do other applications work fine with the source control repository? The reason I'm asking is because you must first rule out that there are external factors causing this behaviour. It seems that your it guys have already looked at it, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
I have used both VSS and TFS and I haven't encountered such a performance issue. I would suggest filing it as a bug if you rule out that the problem is not related to external influences: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&loc=en
Kind regards,
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database in order to use the same Source Control database as the
rest of the dev. team?

Hi Sevans,
Indeed there is. You can plug the source into a library (this
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clear, Robohelp does not integrate with VSS directly like some
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Multiple programs crash using a Save As dialog box, suspected cause is interaction of machine with Robohelp

Hi all,
Apologies if this is in the wrong area, it could also be related to RoboSource Control.
I have a problem with my entire system. I am getting regularly kicked out of programs when I try to add an attachment or save something. It occurs when a standard Windows 'Save As' or 'Open file' dialog box is opened to browse to a file path, and this regularly leads to being kicked out of the whole program. This happens in Chrome, all the microsoft office programs, outlook, adobe acrobat reader - everything in fact where I use one of these standard Windows file browsing dialog boxes. The kicking out is pretty indiscriminate - it doesn't happen every time. Sometimes it will take me 5 or 6 attemps to save something or add an attachment, having to reload the program each time. Sometimes, but rarely, it will work first time.
The only program it doesn't happen in is Roboscreen Capture and Robohelp, which is odd in itself. Both the two other technical writers in my department have both exactly the same issue with their machines, and this never happens to anyone else in the office of about 40 people. The only thing me and the two other technical writers have in common with our machines is that we all have Robohelp and RoboSource Control and Roboscreen Capture.
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Can anyone on here give a helping hand to point me in the right direction?
Many thanks,
Matt.

I've been hanging around these forums for about ten years and that's a new one on me. It's only happening to people with Rh but it doesn't happen in Rh, just about everything else.
Are you maybe using a very old version of Rh on an operating system it wasn't designed for? I would doubt that as you would be seeing many more problems. What operating system are you using?
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Robohelp hangs when I try to add baggage files to projects

I have two RoboHelp projects using source control (Visual Studio/Team Foundation Server) in Robohelp HTML version 8. Both service packs are installed.
When I right click the Baggage Files folder and select 'Add to baggage files' the program hangs, and I have to crash out of it. This started happening in both projects at the same time, possibly as a result of me adding image files to the baggage files folder. I've reverted to the project as it was before I made these changes, but the problem persists.
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Hi Rick,
Thanks for yor speedy reply.
It's a good thought, but I've verified that the rhbag.apj file isn't set to read only. In fact, I tried editing it after the problem started in an attempt to add baggae files manually. That didn't work (I was able to trick Robohelp but not the server...).
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Version Control

I have RoboHelp HTML Version 7. We use RoboHelp for publishing our procedures; we use our Word documents for making reviews, updates, etc. and then just reimport and republish as necessary. Our company is asking us to use version control on our procedures. Since we cannot use the version control in RoboHelp, does anyone know of a version control app that can be used where we can import our docs from that app into RoboHelp? Version 7 only allows importing of Word, PDF, and HTML docs from folders on our computers or shared drives. I'm not sure if Version 8 has additional features.

Hi Karen
Attaching will not work. If you want to supply samples, you will need to make them available some other way such as Acrobat.com or YouSendIt.com.
Cheers... Rick
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Looking for documentation regarding RoboHelp and VSS (SourceSafe)

We are considering using VSS (SourceSafe) as our source control for RoboHelp - has anyone had any success with
RoboHelp and this tool?

The config.xml has a schema - see the config.xml for the location. There is not much documentation in it since it is generated.
Each of the elements is also accessible via a JMX MBean - there is a reference manual that describes the MBean values,
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E12840_01/wls/docs103/wlsmbeanref/core/index.html
You can use that to understand the config.xml elements - you will have to map from MBean name to element name - i.e. DomainMBean to domain (in config.xml)

File Discrepancies for Multi Users

Hi ...
We are running RH7 and RSC3.1 with 3 users - We identified
(only yesterday) that after User 1 had deleted one topic file from
Project Manager and added several others ... User 2 and 3 had
broken links for these topics.
We are able to update existing topics by one user, who check
in, then user 2 and 3 can get the latest version and instantly view
the changes - lovely!! Exactly what we would expect ...
But the same is not occurring when we remove or add entire
topics to both the Project Manager and the TOC ...
User 2 and 3 see the topics in the TOC with the dreaded red
cross through them ... and have to try and locate the file or
restore broken links etc ... to get their view of the project in
sync with User 1. This seems to defeat the whole purpose of being
able to have a multi user authoring environment????
A major concern of this problem appears to be the risk of
undoing each others work by potentially restoring files that
another user intended to remove ...
Is anyone else experiencing similar issues ... we are in a
big organisation and are very restricted in terms of our ability to
access the servers etc ... but I want to know if there is something
we should be checking or doing differently from an application
perspective? Any advice or ideas are greatly appreciated...
Many thanks ...
Frustrated!

Hi Fi@qldpol, and welcome to the board. With your situation,
there are two likely possibilities:
1. Was your project added to source control via RoboHelp, or
was it initially added using RoboSource Control? If it was added
from RoboSource Control, then that is the problem.
2. If #1 is not the problem, then you might be having
problems with some of the users' CPD files. First, have everyone
make backups of the local version of their project (the files
actually residing on their PCs). Then have User 2 and User 3 delete
their copy of the project, and replace it with a copy of User 1's
local files. Before they open the project, they should delete the
cpd and pss files. After they delete those files, they can open the
project as usual and let the cpd file rebuild. We have to do this
every so often with some of our projects to get everyone
synchronized.
Hope that helps.
G

Hyperlink to topic in second window

Hello everyone
I am trying to create a hyperlink from a topic displayed in
the Main window of a .chm to a topic that is displayed in a Second
window of the .chm.
In the past I have created a link from a button to display a
topic in a window named About using a Related Topic.htm technique.
I have tried using this technique using the same Related Topic.htm
but it does not seem to work.
There may be a more simple way to do this but I don't know ?
All help gratefully received.

Hi there seaandsamuel and Colum
Admittedly, I haven't tried the technique of using a Related
Topics control in RoboHelp 7. Not sure if I tried it in 6 either.
So it's possible that something got broken where it used to work.
Could be the RoboHelp side and it could be the Microsoft side, what
with all the recent patches and whatnot.
Colum, what is being referred to here is using a Related
Topics control to link to a different topic inside the same .CHM
file and have that topic open up in a secondary window you have
defined for the .CHM.
It's really a shame that we have to jump through hoops to do
this. I remember voicing a concern over it and bringing it up in
beta after beta back in the eHelp days. But it was always met with
silence. I guess the development team back then either considered
it was too difficult to code in or not enough folks would actually
want it so as to warrant the change. But I digress...
seandsamuel, if I get a moment during my RoboHelp class today
(and if I remember
) I'll try to test it in 7. I do recall that X5 was
really fussy with it and I had to struggle to finally coax it to
work.
Cheers all... Rick

Checked out files

We are using RoboHelp 8 with just RoboSource Control 3.1 as our only version control applicaiton. They are being used on workstations with Windows XP pro.
We have a problem that I was unable to find in any of the previous posts.
We have two editors that edit the content of our online manuals. They have local copies of the projects that have been added to Source Control from RoboHelp to Source Control initially. both users have the same path for their local copies. Each has their own user id to open Source Control. There is a third user who publishes the content to our website as a quality control measure.
Our problem is keeping files from being published. We often have multiple topics being edited for different lengths of time. For example topics 1, 2 & 3 may all be in draft mode while topic 4 is edited and ready to be published. We do not want the edits to 1, 2 & 3 to be updated to source control so that when our publisher gets the latest version only the edits to topic 4 are published.
It was our understanding that files that remained checked out would not update source control. So, our first method was to create duplicate topics and made edits to those and keep those files checked out while checking in the remaining project files. However, they were automatically added to source control and therefore downloaded when our publisher got the latest version.
After researching a bit, we tried having our editors do a local check out only of those topics to be edited and not create any duplicate copy and not check them in until they were ready to be published. But the Source Control was still updated with any and all changes made to these topics.
The workaround we have tried now is to have the editors notify the publisher what topics are ready and then she "gets" just those files and compiles and publishes. But that seems like an awkward solution to a process that is supposed to allow us to edit and only publish what we need published.
Does anyone have a better solution? Is there a setting I have missed to keep these files from updating source control?
The second thing we noticed is that while Editor 1 has the files checked out locally - on her workstation, RSC has it checked out to her. When anyone else opens RSC, the file status is that Admin user has them checked out even though Editor 1 used her individual login to check them out.
I am confused because this is not how I thought Source Control is supposed to work.

As a test, can you try logging into one of the libraries with these files as an admin and seeing if you can take ownership of it via the document library settings. From here try checking it in again and advising what happens.
Steven Andrews
SharePoint Business Analyst: LiveNation Entertainment
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Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves (or helps) your problem.

Can you specify the RH version from a command prompt?

When using command prompts to generate WebHelp output, is there a way to specify which version of Robohelp will be used?
Here's the situation:
We recently upgraded all of our help projects to RH8, installed RH8 on our software build server, and are now successfully using command prompts to generate RH8 output files (webhelp) during our s/w build process.
However, since the help system for our last major release is still in RH7, we also need to be able to automatically generate output in RH7 using the same build server, which has both versions of the s/w are installed. This is in case we need to send out a patch release before our next major release becomes available.
When we ran the build program for the last software release (the one with the RH7 help system), the command prompts now cause RH8 to run and to generate RH8 output. But since these files are still in RH7 format, the generated output has various issues with lists and templates--basically all the stuff that I spent 2-3 days fixing manually fix when upgrading to RH8.
Anyone know how to control which Robohelp version will run when using command prompts? (using RH8 help files with the last software release is not an option--there have been too many changes).
Thanks.

I have a feeling that I once tried to change the default version of RoboHelp and it wasn't successful first time. As it was not that important, I didn't poke around any more.
Maybe you could try changing the default version but I wouldn't like to answer for any undesired results you may get. I suspect by far the easier option is to install RH7 on another machine.
One other warning. I do recall that on one machine after uninstalling RH7, I had to reinstall RH8 as it created problems.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

PSS File Checks Out but Will not Check In

Everytime I check out a project from Version Control, then
check it all back in for another person to work on it, the PSS does
not check in unless I go into RoboSource Explorer 3 Manually and
UnCheck it. Is there a fix or something I am doing wrong
here?

Hi Jeffrey. I think there may be a fundamental problem in how
you added your project to source control.
To quote MergeThis from another post: "Apparently, these
files should not be included in any source control solution: CPD,
HHP, LDB, and PSS."
The recommended way to add a project to RoboSource Control is
to upload it directly from *RoboHelp,* not from RoboSource Control.
RoboHelp knows which files do and don't belong in RoboSource
Control. Adding projects to source control directly from RoboSource
is usually the cause of this error...and in fact there are a bunch
of other oddities that also crop up when you do this, too.
If you added your project to source control via RSC rather
than RH itself, I'd recommend starting over and uploading the
project from RH. Mind you, if you are dealing with a DB converted
from the previous RSC, then that might be a different story.
Cheers,
G

Opening projects from RSC2 in RoboHelp8

I just upgraded to the TCS2 and am trying to open a project that I had created in RH7 and stored in the previous RoboSource Control. RoboHelp warns me that all files created in an earlier version of RohoHelp must be updated, I agree, and then I get a few prompts about files that have been modified locally. I click on the Replace button and then get error messages saying that these files cannot be "multiply Checked Out". The only option is to click OK and then not access the project. What do I need to do to access files from an earlier version of RoboHelp and stored in an earlier database on RSC???
Any help is greatly appreciated!
Kim

Hi Kim
Just hazarding a guess here. Perhaps open the project in RoboHelp 7 and use the toolbar icon to remove from Source Control. Then convert the project to version 8 and add it back into Source Control.
Cheers... Rick
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Proprietary tags - invalid HTML

Does anyone know why RoboHelp adds <spaces> tags and what are they used for? Is there a way to prevent RoboHelp from adding it? Since they're not valid HTML tags, the topics created using RoboHelp really aren't compliant. Also, I've never seen the CSS attribute "x-right" and "x-cell" either. Unfortunately Google doesn't have any useful information on these tags.
Any information would be helpful.
Thanks!

Hi,
These attributes and tags are just RoboHelps way of maintaining files, and don't appear in the output.
If I recall correctly, RoboHelp inserts the spaces tag whenever you add a couple of spaces in the WYSIWYG editor. If you don't want that, insert some non-breakable spaces (& nbsp;) in html mode. (without the space though, but if I add the html character, the forum turns it into a non-breakable space :-( )
The attributes x-right, x-cell, x-save-position, x-use-null-cells, x-next-tag, and so on help RoboHelp position elements and control how RoboHelp maintains them. Example:
H1 {
x-next-class: Body-Text;
x-next-type: P;
in the definition of a style, makes that the next paragraph after a header is a standard paragraph with the class Body-Text. You can remove these from your style sheet, but RoboHelp may put them back whenever you edit the css trough the built-in css editor.
I wouldn't worry about the x- commands in topics, as there removed when you generate your output, and RoboHelp just adds them again when you remove them in html mode. The only way to get rid of them is to edit the html files in an external editor.
Greets,
Willam

Doctype control in RoboHelp

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