How do I generate PDF and CHM files from the a command line in windows?

Question

I am trying to set up a PC to build some documents during the night. I was looking for a way to get framemaker to generate PDF and CHM files via a command line in windows? How is this done with FrameMaker 12
Thanks for the help
Alex

Answer 1

Hi,
The part with generate a PDF via a jsx seems to work OK, except when FrameMaker decides that it will not work anymore. I must say I am not impressed with the stabillity of FrameMaker 12, there is room for a lot of improvement!.
I have given up on how to figure out how to get FrameMaker 12 to generate chm files via jsx scripts, any pointes are still very welcome.
The route I have taken is I make a RoboHelp project for each chm files I need to generate. The only thing this RoboHelp project contains is a link to the actual FrameMaker project I want to generate a chm file.
To make the chm I start RoboHelp with a script that
1) Opens the desired project
2) Sets the desired output chm files name
3) Generates the chm file
4) And finally quits RoboHelp
Below is a copy of the jsx in case anyone can reuse anything.  And yes parameters are transfered via enviroments variable. I have later learned there is some way to read the parameters given at a command line but this seems to work so I stick to this for now.
// Get parameters
var RhProjName = $.getenv("RH_PROJ_NAME");
var RhChmName = $.getenv("RH_CHM_NAME");
var RhLogFileName = $.getenv("RH_LOGFILE_NAME");
var RhLogFile = new File(RhLogFileName);
RhLogFile.open("w", "TEXT");
RhLogFile.writeln("RH_PROJ_NAME : ", RhProjName);
RhLogFile.writeln("RH_CHM_NAME : ", RhChmName);
doc = RoboHelp.openProject (RhProjName, 1);
var sslmngr = RoboHelp.project.SSLManager;
for(var i = 1; i<=sslmngr.count; i++){
  var ssl = sslmngr.item(i);
  if(ssl.name == 'Microsoft HTML Help') {
    // Set the output location and file name
    ssl.setSpecificProperty("DestinationProjectName", RhChmName);
    if (doc.saveAll(true) ) {
      RhLogFile.writeln("saveAll returned TRUE");
    } else {
      RhLogFile.writeln("saveAll returned FALSE");
    if ( ssl.generate() ) {
      RhLogFile.writeln("ssl.generate returned TRUE");
    } else {
      RhLogFile.writeln("ssl.generate returned FALSE");
  } else {
    // alert ("Found " + ssl.name + " dont do anything");
doc.saveAll(true);
RhLogFile.close();
RoboHelp.closeProject();
RoboHelp.quit();