Merged child project's TOC not appearing in parent project's TOC

Question

System Information
Windows XP Professional, SP2
Windows Explorer 6.0
RoboHelp X5.0.2
Generating RoboHelp HTML Help (.chm)
Issue
I had the following Help projects:
1. CombinedProductHelp.chm (parent
project)
2. ProductHelp.chm (child 1 project)
3. ProductBestPracticesHelp.chm (child 2 project)
The parent project is a very small Help project that is used
as a place in which to merge the two child projects. I was able to
add the two child projects to the parent project’s TOC in the
RoboHelp HTML TOC editor, seemingly without any problem. The
problem arose when I generated the .chm output for the merged
projects; upon opening the parent project’s .chm file, I
discovered that the Child 1 project’s TOC wasn’t
appearing in the TOC. The Child 2 project’s TOC appeared just
fine. I was able to retrieve topics from the Child 1 project using
the Search function and index – I just couldn’t use the
TOC.
After a bit of trial and error, I discovered that the problem
was the result of the file names I had chosen for the Parent
project (CombinedProductHelp.chm) and the Child 1 project
(ProductHelp.chm). For some unknown reason, if the ENTIRE file name
that’s used for a child project is identical to a PART of
file name that’s used for a parent project, the child
project’s TOC will not appear in the merged TOC. I've used
underscores to "right-justify" the problematic file name to more
clearly illustrate this:
CombinedProductHelp.chm
________ProductHelp.chm
Resolution
You can resolve the issue by renaming either file. Any ONE of
the following examples will resolve the issue:
* Insert a letter (other than
“d”) in front of “ProductHelp.chm” (e.g.,
SProductHelp.chm)
* Insert a letter between “p” and “.”
of “ProductHelp.chm” (e.g., ProductHelpS.chm)
* Insert a letter in the “ProductHelp” portion of
“CombinedProductHelp.chm” (e.g.,
CombinedProducXtHelp.chm)
In the example above, renaming the
“CombinedProductHelp.chm” to
“CombinedHelp.chm” resolved the issue; both child
project TOCs now appear in the parent .chm TOC.

Answer 1

Tracey,
Safari might need some of the patches that make WebHelp
behave better (to some extent, anyway) in Netscape, Firefox and
Opera for Windows.
Let's try to pinpoint the problem.
WebHelp generally loads in this order:
--Frame outline
--Main toolbar plain background, then buttons, then the image
background, if any.
--The welcome topic
--The minibar at left-- empty frame, then background and
icons, if any (browse, synch TOC and hide X)
--Table of contents background
--TOC list.
How far does the Mac browser get when you first launch
WebHelp?
If the main topic loads, and it has links to other topics. do
they work?
Can you get the Index and search to work?
Can you hide the left pane and click Contents to show it?
Still empty?
Harvey