RoboHelp 10 questions

We are looking at a trial version of RoboHelp 10, and there are certain issues I'm trying to get a handle on. (We currently use RoboHelp 8.) So far working with the trial version for a couple of hours (and viewing a few brief Adobe videos) has not helped. Could any of you who use RoboHelp 10 advise me on the following?
For years we have generated WebHelp and used the topics on their own, without using the main help "start" file, because we wanted a single frame, not the tri-pane look. Each topic has a header that we include using the templates/master pages. The header includes icons that work as a "back" button and links to the TOC and Index, as well as a print icon and a search field. If the user clicks the TOC or Index, that opens in the main window instead of the text from the previous topic. I had hoped that we could make a screen layout with this approach (since we are also interested in multi-screen layout for tablet and desktop support), but I'm still not seeing a way to get a simple topic window with a header. Is that possible?
I'm also not seeing a way to create your own screen layout from scratch. You seem to have to start with one of the layouts that are included. Is that correct?
If we wanted to be able to search across multiple generated help projects, would we need to merge the help projects?
Thank you for your help.
Tammy

Hi Tammy
I'll try to address some of these.
tspaul wrote:
For years we have generated WebHelp and used the topics on their own, without using the main help "start" file, because we wanted a single frame, not the tri-pane look. Each topic has a header that we include using the templates/master pages. The header includes icons that work as a "back" button and links to the TOC and Index, as well as a print icon and a search field. If the user clicks the TOC or Index, that opens in the main window instead of the text from the previous topic. I had hoped that we could make a screen layout with this approach (since we are also interested in multi-screen layout for tablet and desktop support), but I'm still not seeing a way to get a simple topic window with a header. Is that possible?
Nothing really changes between 8 and 10 in this respect. You should still be able to generate as you did before. But your mention of wanting a "screen layout" seems that you are wanting to delve into the fun brave new world of HTML 5. Good luck with that! I'll have to let Willam or another that has lots of HTML 5 experience answer that one.
I'm also not seeing a way to create your own screen layout from scratch. You seem to have to start with one of the layouts that are included. Is that correct?
I believe it's possible to create your own layout. But it's certainly NOT the most intuitive process and it's one I honestly hope Adobe will simplify in a future build so that us mere humans are easily able to create and customize our own HTML 5 layouts without requiring a PHD and 40 years experience coding HTML 5 and CSS. As it stands, it's not a process for the faint of heart.
If we wanted to be able to search across multiple generated help projects, would we need to merge the help projects?
Since the first two questions seemed to be HTML 5 (Multiscreen) centric, are we to assume this one falls into that area as well? If so, again, Willam or someone with HTML 5 Multiscreen skills will have to advise. I'm unsure if merging is even possible using that output type.
Cheers... Rick

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Best Practice for Image placement and Anchored Frames for use in Robohelp 9

Hi,
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I think Jeff is meaning this section of the RoboHelp forums:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/robohelp/robohelp_framemaker

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Best Practices for image layout and positioning using anchored frames in Framemaker 10

Hi,
I'm looking for the best practices in how to layout my images in Framemaker 10 so that they translate correctly to Robohelp 9. I currently have images inside of Anchored frames that "Run into" the right side of my text. I've adjusted the size of the anchored frame so that my text flows correctly around the image. Everything looks good in Framemaker! Yeah! The problem is that when I link my Framemaker document to Robohelp, the text does not flow around my image in the same manner. On a couple of Robohelp screens the image is running into the footer. I'm wondering if I should be using tables in Framemaker in order to get the page layout that I'm looking for. Also, I went back and forth...is this a Framemaker question or is this a Robohelp question. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I wish I could offer some advice, rather than simply adding to your question. I think there is something odd that happens with anchored frames.
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.chm file is too large for application

Sorry. This isn't your typical RoboHelp question.
I have a very large RoboHelp project with about 300 topics and many, many screen captures. Our lead developer has discovered that it would take the customer 3 minutes and 17 seconds to download the application with the help file as part of the build. For him, that seems like an inordinate amount of time for the customer to have to wait.
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Does anyone know of other solutions to this problem?

And now, for a different perspective!
Personally, I fall into the rebel camp that likes to be redundant. I favor including screen captures in the help.
I hate when a help topic refers to the whatchamacallit on the foozoo screen. As a user, I may not be certain I'm even ON the foozoo screen! So speaking as a user, I love it when I see a nice screen capture that at least tells me I'm on the right screen. Even better if it points out the whatchamacallit.
However I dislike when folks capture only the whatchamacallit button or area and show that. For example, the image below:
I much prefer something such as:
Keep in mind that RoboHelp offers features such as DHTML drop-downs that allow you to keep images hidden until the user chooses to view them. This keeps the page lean and clean if that's your goal.
I think my last projects in the corporate world had somewhere along the lines of 40,000 files involved. Images, Topics and whatnot. I was catapulted into unemployment in May, 2004. So 300 topics seems like such a small system.
Cheers.. Rick
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Beginner training resources

Greetings RoboHelpers,
I've recently downloaded a trial copy of RoboHelp 9 and am just trying to get oriented. My help production system is currently based on Frame 8 and Quadralay WebWorks, so at least I have some single-sourcing experience.
I've been plowing through the product help, but as the "Getting Started" section doesn't actually seem to provide much meaningful assistance in terms of ... well, actually "getting started", I was wondering if there's not some basic resource somewhere that would walk one through setting up a project, mapping styles and generating some basic output, etc. to start getting a feel for the product.
I dabbled with RoboHelp years back prior to the Adobe aquisition - it certainly seems to be vastly more extensive compared to those early days. In particular, I'm hoping that RoboHelp is more customization-friendly than WebWorks, which I've been finding to be too kludgey and brittle in many respects. I appreciate any tutorial suggestions anyone might have, as well as any input w/respect to the whole WebWorks v. RoboHelp question!
Cheers, Brian S.

There's also a bunch of stuff on Peter Grainge's website (grainge.org) and Rick's RoboWizard site (robowizard.com).

Cannot display comments by topic

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Oh, also, it appears that much of our formatting (which includes a lot of indented lists) is getting wacky in the Air version (it displays correctly as the html webhelp pro output.
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Thanks!
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Kristen this seems more like a RoboHelp question, probably you'll have a
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a Word doc that behaves as a distiller file and then creates a PDF. Is there a way to generate just a Word document?
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I do not have the full version of Acrobat and can't edit text with Adobe Reader.
thanks for any feedback!
Rachel

Hi Rachel
Examine the properties of your Printed Documentation Single Source Layout recipe.
You might be pleasantly surprised.
Cheers... Rick
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Hi all,
I am a consultant that has been preparing a RoboHelp HTML
help file for a client. At the moment, I have a license that I use
for development purposes but thus far the client is still awaiting
a purchase order for their own license for further maintenance and
upgrades to the project.
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their distribution via webserver without them having the license?
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file up for browsing?
thanks
Dave

Hi Peter,
Thanks for the extremely fast response.
Dave

Decompiling chm, opening hhp in Robohelp, 2 questions

Hi, I've been looking through the forum posts, as well as on Peter Grainge's web site under Reverse Engineering, and I haven't quite found the answers to some questions I have about turning a chm file into a RoboHelp project. Any help with the following would be much appreciated.
Background
Our .net API developers use ndoc (which I've never used) to generate a chm file for each API. I received a copy of one of the chm files. Kind of looks like a handy dictionary, in the same spirit as Man pages, with definitions of methods, elements, types, and syntax. Useful for what it is. But there's very little in the way of context or "big picture".
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What I Tried
After reading Peter's reverse engineering info, I opened RH8 and used HTML Help Studio to decompile the chm file I received.
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My Questions
1. Before I spend more time on this, am I even on the right track, thinking that the way to go is to take API Development team's chm files and turn them into RH8 projects that I can doctor up? Or am I overlooking a better alternative?
2. Is there another way to recreate the topic hierarchy, TOC, and index after decompiling the chm file and then opening the hhp file in RH8?
Thanks again for any and all help.

I think you are on the right track.
TOC AND INDEX
You should be able to recover those. Check the detail of my article. Post back if no joy.
HIEREARCHY
It is a while since I have done any reverse engineering so I would have to test whether or not the hierarchy is maintained. I thought it was but not sure.
It maybe there was no hierarchy in the source. You don't need one to create a TOC with hierarchy so are you sure the developers had one? I suspect they may well have ignored niceties like that. If so, you would either have to live with that or undertake it manually.
FUTURE
Have you considered how you will maintain this arrangement when the product is upgraded? I guess you could reverse engineer the CHM you are given and then import the topics you need, provided they don't need too much massage.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Robohelp X5 For HTML Support Question

We are currently using Robohelp X5 for HTML and are
contemplating an upgrade to version 7 probably later this year. In
the meantime, has there been any discussion about ending support
for X5?
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Hi Wayne
There will be wars and there will be rumors of wars...
X5 was introduced in January 2004. I'm not sure what you mean
by "ending support". If that question is intended to ask if Adobe
will "officially" stop supporting that version, I'm personally not
sure they ever have!
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As for upgrading to version 7, why upgrade to that when 8 is
available and offers a richer experience?
Cheers... Rick

Robohelp 8 HTML - VERY basic layout and naming question.

OK, I'm sure this must be obvious to everyone else because I can't seem to find it in the places I've searched. My personal experience with Help files isn't helping (yeah, I know, bad pun).
I'm creating a RoboHelp HTML file from a PDF file.
While importing the file I'm given the option to create a new topic based on a style. Great so far. Having done so as an experiment and looked at the output I'm of the feeling that a 'topic' is "an HTML document that would, in theory, cover an area of interest, hence the term topic".
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In the Internet Explorer help, what do I call the links in the left pane on which I can click to bring up a page in the right pane? What do I call the items I can highlight that, when clicked, show a list of the clickable links? And is it accurate that if I ask RoboHelp to create a topic out of each of a given style, then I'll have a separate HTML document for each instance of that style?
Thanks,
Solon

Hi there and welcome to the wonderful wild and wacky world of Help Authoring!
The area on the left side is typically called a "Navigation Pane". The Navigation Pane usually has different views. Table of Contents (TOC), Index, Glossary and of course, Search.
The Table of Contents view has a Books and Pages metaphor. Each Book contains Pages inside. Each Page links directly to an individual HTML file (Topic).
Indeed if you are sucking content in from PDF, RoboHelp has to be told what the criteria is to break the long PDF document into individual HTML topic pages.
Hopefully this helps a smidge... Rick
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Questions for RoboHelp 6

We have just recently transfered our old html help to
RoboHelp 6 and can't figure out the following:
1) Can the color of the 'books' in the Contents menu be
changed from blue to another color? If so, how?
2) Can the Index be hidden from the menu so only Contents and
Search are available to the user?, If so, how?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi DFWBob and welcome to the RH community. By "html help" did
you mean CHM output? If so, I have some good news and some bad
news. The good news is you can change the book colour. Download
Rick Stone's
tips
n tricks file and look for "icon strip" in the index for
details of how to do this. The bad news is that you can't have the
index suppressed without suppressing the TOC. However if the CHM
has no index keywords, the Index tab is not displayed regardless of
whether you have the option ticked in the window definition.

Robohelp 9 question on referring to javascripts

Hello. I am working with Robohelp 9. I am working with a group in India that incorporates the Robohelp files that I have generated into their product's online help .They are telling me that they have to hand edit output files from the SSL! folder to add a location for the javascripts they are using (i.e. whver.js). The output for my topic files contain this reference: <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="whver.js"></script>. They want me to edit these this to add this to the path: /...abcdirectory/ after src=".
I have moved the files to abcdirectory, but the output files do not generate with this path. It is impractical to edit output files. Is there another way in Robohelp to indicate the location of the .js files so that the output files contain the correct path?
Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm confused. You said you were having to hand edit them, presumably to meet their requirements. My point was to decline to do this as there is no need. They are asking you to make a change they are making when there is no need to make the change in the first place.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Robohelp 9 question. URGENT! Thanks!

I have a user that is having an issue where when she inserts an image into a document and saves, it doesn't save it to the file on the server (where it is supposed to), it just saves it in the body of the text. Does that make sense? Have you seen this issue?
I re-installed Robohelp and created a new profile for her on her machine and deleted the old one from the registry; still nothing. She is using Windows 7 x64.
I really appreciate any insight. Thanks!

That will not solve the problem. Whatever you do you have to move it locally and hope there is no corruption. I recommend you zip the project and move it for two reasons.
1] You will have a copy of where the project is now if anything goes wrong.
2] Very occasionally we have seen people having problems using copy and paste across the network.
Delete the CPD and then open the project and verify all is OK.
After that you have two options.
1] Work on it locally and zip a copy to the network every night when working on the project.
2] Implement source control. Part of that will involve checking in that local copy. When you work on the project thereafter RoboHelp will check out to the local copy whatever it needs and you then check back in as required.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

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