Files modified outside of RoboHelp project

Question

Here's an odd problem. Instead of updating files in RoboHelp,
a trainer in my office has been using Dreamweaver to update the
output files directly. (Going into !SSL!\Webhelp and editing those
files instead of editing the files in the project and regenerating
the help.)
In addition, there are a great many new things (documents,
links to external files, etc.) that are linked to the modified
files. A help file that I created ended up being tacked on to the
whole thing via a link on the intro screen instead of being merged
into the TOC like the other help modules. (The person who created
the original help system is not the person who has been maintaining
it for the past two years.)
As a result, the topics in the RoboHelp project do not
necessarily match all of the topics in the current help system.
This is now on my plate. In addition to making sure that my
colleague attends a RoboHelp training class, any advice on the best
way to clean this up?

Answer 1

Hi Cindy
Oh dear oh dear. You have quite a task ahead of you!
I'm sure there will be many folks that will raise their
eyebrows after reading what I'm about to suggest. But I'd have to
say that if you aren't totally sure about what has been updated,
you might be safer by simply copying the WebHelp output files and
overay the project source files. After you do that, there will be
much cleanup work involved. Fortunately, I've developed an article
that should help with this task. You can read it by
Clicking
here.
In my opinion, the only other real option is to methodically
compare each topic with the source topic to ascertain if it has
changed. This could likely prove far more tedious and time
consuming than it would be to do what I suggested earlier.
Regardless of how you choose to proceed, you should ensure
you have a good backup on hand.
After you get it all sorted out, it's time for a really good
lesson for your "helper" about the difference between
source and
output files. Perhaps a human parallel to the old analogy
about feeding oats to horses is in order. You know the one. You
feed oats to the horse. That's like creating WebHelp. The oats go
in one way and come out, ummm, how shall I put this? "Processed".
So as you might imagine, the "processed" oats won't be nearly as
appetizing and nutritious the second (and subsequent) passes
through the horse. Tell the "helper" that if they insist on working
that way, you are going to force them to eat "specially processed"
oats for lunch every day until the activity stops.
Hopefully this helps... Rick