Snippets in Robohelp

I am currently evaluating Robohelp 6.0. I'd like to know the
best way to include repeatable text in topics?
I am quite familiar with Flare application; flare uses
snippets for that. Is there an analog to Flare's snippets in
Robohelp?
Regards,
Natalie.

Hi,
My team uses version X5, so we can't use the method that
Colum described. Instead, we create a separate topic, then insert
popup links to that topic.
Suggestions:
The popup topics can use a different CSS (for example, giving
them a lightly colored background).
Popup topics may or may not include a heading (H1 tag).
You can save all the popup topics in a separate folder.
You can create a Glossary topic using these popup topics. (We
don't use RH's glossary functionality, due to its various
deficiencies.)
Hope this helps. It works great for us.
Regards,
Eileen

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Hi Wendy,
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Hello,
If you are using a MAS server then you may also be using a MAS ODBC Drvier? If so please contact Sage for support.
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Using Robohelp 7 - snippets disappear

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There are a couple of suggestions in this thread.
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Hello all,
I made a brand new file in Robohelp 9. I made it locally and moved the entire folder to the fileshare. When I tried to open it from the fileshare, I got the error that the file was corrupt and to delete the CPD file. I delete the CPD file and that fixes the issue. However, whenever we move it from the fileshare to our local drive or back again, the file gets corrupted again. Every time.
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You cannot run projects from a network other than with source control. The reason is explained in Snippets on my site.
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Error while compiling RoboHelp 6

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--> take default settings again, click Next --> again default
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Welcome to the forum.
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Can't pin RoboHelp to the Windows 7 taskbar (solution)

I finally figured out how to pin RoboHelp 8 to the taskbar in Windows 7!
Create a shortcut to RoboHelp on the desktop.
Rename the shortcut RH. The shortcut name must not contain the word "help".
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This took a long time to figure out. I finally found the answer here:
http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/32765.aspx
I hope someone finds this helpful.

The cause of this has been known for some time, it is the same reason that RoboHelp has never appeared on the Recently Used list through various versions of Windows. There's a short reference to this in Snippets on my site and there was a link to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article that confirmed all this.
Rick Strahl's comprehensive explanation is very useful as it does explain how someone can fix this on their own PC if they so choose. It's a great link, thank you for finding it and taking the trouble to register here and post it.
Welcome to the forum.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Command Line builds do not include graphics used in snippets

Hello,
I want to be able to build my help projects using RHCL. I have managed to get it to work so my projects will build. However, I use a few snippets that include a graphic in the projects. I have noticed that the graphics are not displayed in the projects that were built using RHCL. They are displayed however if I build a project in Robohelp itself.
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Thanks,
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shikha6g wrote:
i've thought..,you people are brainy enough to help me out in the javascript too...!!so..,i relied on this forum and have posted my problem,coz solving this thing was really imp for me.
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Why is RoboHelp not displaying the required data content of .chm when linked as Help in my App ?

Gorgeous Hello All,
Has anyone encountered the below-said show- stopper. Another BIG TIME help required, will help me in tremendous fashion.
Am using Adobe RoboHelp, Version 10 and IE version being 10.
In my local machine :
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3.)Generating Primary Layout : File -> Generate -> Primary Layout (Microsoft HTML Help)…
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Show Stopper, At my Application Server :
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6.)My Application has been developed in ASP .NET, Version 4.0.
7.)Help link has been created in this application wherein here the file name of < >.chm has been linked in the code to be read from the Server’s RoboHelp project folder\!SSL!\ Microsoft_HTML_Help\
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a.)Clicking on any of the Books or Topics appearing beneath Contents : The System prompts out with error cautionary message called “ Navigation to the webpage was cancelled. What you can try: Retype the address ”
*** This is a huge SHOW-STOPPER. I spent plenty of hours on this, but unable to deciper with a solution at all) ***
( Note : Am able to directly open and read the required data contents by Clicking on any of the Books or Topics appearing beneath Contents from Server’s RoboHelp project folder\!SSL!\ Microsoft_HTML_Help\ < >.chm )
Why is the RoboHelp not displaying the required data contents of <>.chm when linked as Help in my Application ?
Cheese – Vipin Nambiar

If you looked at the error message and searched the forum, you should find the answer as this is a problem that started in 2005. You should not run CHM files from a server and cannot without editing the users registry. See the page below.
http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/chm_mspatch/896358.htm
All along your questions have been based on webhelp, why suddenly are we going go CHMs.
See Snippets on my site for the correct form of help to use in different scenarios.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Can you apply a hyperlink to a snippet?

I'm creating FAQs in my project and I'm trying different things. If there's a better
way to do this, I'm all for it. I created my questions and inserted them into a mini TOC placeholder.
I'm still deciding if I want to expand/collapse the answers or take the easy route and add a "Back to Top" link to my topic title that I have bookmarked.
This is the first time I've used snippets. I created one called "Back to Top" and inserted a few of them in my FAQs topic. When I highlight the snippet, I can't click the hyperlink icon so that I can link it back to the bookmark.
Please advise.
Thanks!

Hi there
First off, you don't need a bookmark at the top of the page. All you need is a link that points to # in order to reload the topic at the top. So save your effort there.
If you are intent on doing this, I seemed to make it happen as follows:
Create a variable to serve as the hyperlink. Format the variable to link to # as I stated earlier. Drop the variable into the Snippet.
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Robohelp 9 with patch - Not working with IE10

Hi,
We have a problem with webhelp generated from RoboHelp 9 when viewing with Internet Explorer 10. We can't open a topic on the left or open a search result, until we either :
A) Resize the window
B) Resize the splitter between contents and the content pane on the right
C) Open the dev tools via F12
We have installed the patch provided by adobe for existing webhelp generated by RH9 at the following address :
http://abak09.abaksoftware.com/AbakWeb7700/Extras/Help/EN/
I have also tried to install RH10 and generate the project again, but the same issue occurs.
I don't know what else to look for, the problems are what the patch was released for, but it is not working in our case.

We are reproducing with Windows 8 Pro 64bit, with Internet Explorer 10 (Update version 10.0.3).
I see on your website the snippet "Topics not opening in IE10.". On our web server, we add the IE8 compatibility tag for our web application to work correctly. I have created a new site without this tag and the fix is working.
Thanks a lot for your help

RoboHelp 8 HTML - Toolbar Button: Email with Link to Topic

Realized this would be better on this forum than the WebHelp forum:
Within a skin, I'd like to create a custom email button on my toolbar that would allow a user to email a direct link to a specific file in my RoboHelp project (a Share this Topic feature).
I thought it might be something like this:
window.location=('mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Useful Step-by-Step&body=This Step-by-Step may be helpful for you: ' + window.location)
but that just calls the toolbar, not the topic; the focus isn't on the correct window.
I have the following code that I could imbed on each topic page, but for consistency, I'd like to have this functionality on the toolbar instead. Has anyone done this or come across this before?
<p><script type="text/javascript">
var mailSubject = 'Useful Information';
var mailBody = 'This page might help: ' + location.href;
var mailDisplay = 'Click here for a demo.';
document.write(
'<a href="mailto:[email protected]'
+ '?subject=' + escape(mailSubject)
+ '&body=' + escape(mailBody)
+ '">' + mailDisplay + '</a>'
);</script></p>

For a number of reasons we have decided to take a different approach.
I was trying to include a button in the toolbar for launching the email program to send feedback and comments home in a prepopulated mail subject and body.
I think instead, we can add this as a link in the master page using a modification of Peter's snippet 38 "Email this topic". This rsolves all the problems i was having (i am a novice tweaker not a scripter or coder) and we are able to get our first skin ready in the new Help in time for the forthcoming release candidate.
However, my colleague also wants to add another link using this snippet as origianlly intended, but the body includes a link to the topic file, which in our case is stored locally. We are using webhelp in local product installations rather than via a file server. Obviously the link doesn't help anyone operaitng on another machine.
How can the Javascript be modified to actually send the topic file itself?
TIA
Rob

Missing Snippet Descriptions (upgraded from RH7 to RH9)

Hi all,
I've pretty much successfully upgraded my RH7 project to RH9. I only noticed two problems, one of which is the subject of this thread - the descriptions for each of my snippets isn't displaying. It looks to me like this problem has something to do with the way descriptions were previously stored (in a title tag for RH7 and lower versions?) versus the way the descriptions are now stored (in a meta tag, i think, for RH8 and higher versions?).
I took a look at the hts file for one of my snippets that was upgraded from RH7 to RH9. The code looks like this (I've bolded the snippet description):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 9" />
<title>Use this text above the table that explains Action menu items.</title>
</head>
<body>
<p style="margin-top: 2pt; margin-bottom: 2pt;">Select an action from the
menu and click Go. </p>
<p style="margin-top: 2pt; margin-bottom: 2pt;"> </p>
<p style="margin-top: 2pt; margin-bottom: 2pt;"><span class="NoteTitle">Note:</span>
The Action menu may change depending on the content, the content's status,
your permissions and what you have already accessed. Therefore, the options
explained below may not all be available at the same time.</p>
</body>
</html>
THEN, I created a brand new snippet in RH9. The code looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="topic-comment" content="this is a new test snippet" />
<title>New Snippet</title>
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe RoboHelp 9" />
</head>
<body>
<p>This is placeholder text for your snippet. To add content to the body,
replace this text. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>For information about applying snippets to topics, press <b>F1</b>.</p>
</body>
</html>
Notice how the description for the brand new snippet starts with "<meta name" but for the snippet that was created in RH7 (and then automatically upgraded by RH9), the description for the snippet starts with "<title>".
I have 101 (exact count) snippet files and would hate to have to go into each one and modify this line of code myself, so my question is this: Does anybody know a good, faster way to 'upgrade' all of my hts (snippet) files to follow the new RH9 format?
Here are two things I've tried:
1. Using TextPad, I manually made the change in the .hts file. Result: The description still does not display in the Description column in the Snippets pod (on the left in the screenshot below), but it DOES display in the Snippet Properties window (on the right in the screenshot below).
2. Copying the description from TextPad, then opening the Properties window for the snippet and pasting the description into the Description field, and saving the snippet. This WORKS...but I'll have to do it 100 more times to fix all my snippets, AND the Title tag still ends up being incorrect. Although things LOOK correct in the Properties window (i.e., the Name field indicates the correct name for the snippet, and the Description field now contains the correct description), here's the resulting code:
<meta name="topic-comment" content="Use this text as the explanation for the Add To Cart Action menu option." />
<title>Use this text as the explanation for the Add To Cart Action menu option.</title>
So, the meta and title tags end up having the same values! The title tag should say "Add To Cart" - I don't know how it's possible that it doesn't contain this text as the value for the title tag. Thus, it seems like in order to get the descriptions in there correctly, I have to do a copy, then paste into the Properties window in RH9, but to correct the Title tags I have to open the .hts files in a text editor (i.e., *outside* of RH9) and enter the correct title text for each snippet. Is this really going to be this time-consuming to fix?

Let's try again.
First forget thinking in INCLUDE mode. Everything will be included unless you exclude it.
Example.
Topic 1 has tag A applied to the topic
Topic 2 has tag B applied to the topic
Topic 3 has tag A applied to some of the content (let's say to the word Redrabbit) but not the topic itself.
Topic 4 has the tag A applied to the word Redrabbit and tag B to the word Greenrabbit but no tag on the topic itself.
This is how it should work.
Topic
Topic tag
Text tagged
Expression Not A
Expression Not B
Expression Not A and Not B
Header 6
1
A
Topic will be excluded
Topic be in output
Topic will be excluded
2
B
Topic be in output
Topic will be excluded
Topic will be excluded
3
None
Redrabbit is tagged A
Topic will be in output but the word Redrabbit will be excluded
Whole topic will be in output including the word Redrabbit.
Topic will be in the output but the words Redrabbit and Greenrabbit will be excluded.
4
None
Redrabbit is tagged A and Greenrabbit is tagged B
Topic will be in output but the word Redrabbit will be excluded
Topic will be in the output but the word Greenrabbit will be excluded.
Topic will be in the output but the words Redrabbit and Greenrabbit will be excluded.
Below is the expression dialog.
Here I have selected from Available Tags and put them in Exclude.
Click Advanced and you will see how RH writes the expression.
Written like that, does it now work for you?
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

Using flowplayer videos in RoboHelp 9

Hi folks.
I'm having real difficulty with intalling flowplayer into RH9 topics. I've followed many of the options on the flowplayer website and all of them seem to fail after they have been added to the RoboHelp topic. The code below takes a hyperlink to the video and then loads it into a player that displays at 100% of the frame (this is controlled by a separate css file).
The code I'm using is (approximately):
<body>
<a class="inline-video" href="http://pathtomymovie.mp4" id="player"></a>
<script type="text/javascript">flowplayer("player",
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</body>
The css snippet is as follows:
html, {height:100%;}
a.inline-video {
                 display:block;
                 width:100%;
                 height:100%;
                 margin:0 auto;
                 text-align:center; }
body {
                    height:100%;
                    font-family:Verdana;
                    font-size:9pt;
                    background-color:#ffffff; }
This works fine when previewed and when added by hand to an output file. However, I really need to be able to put this into a topic and generate the webhelp on an ad hoc basis.
I have three main problems. The first is that Robohelp removes the code that it doesn't understand and often adds it's own to replace it. Before upgrading to 9 I managed to get around this by ensuring that once created, the file wasn't reopened but this doesn't help if you accidentally open it for some reason.
The second issue I have is that when the file is generated, Robohelp insists on specifying the javascript lang version as 1.2. This is completely incorrect.
My third issue is that although I can con RH9 into generating the html by not reopening the topic after it's been edited, it doesn't work if I add breadcrumb links to the bottom of the topic instead of the top. The video simply won't display at all.
The path to the javascript file in the header seems to remain unchanged as expected apart from again adding a lang version on export.
Has anyone else tried this? I'm really desperate to find a workable solution.
Thanks and Regards,
Caroline

Hi Willam,
Sorry about not replying sooner, I've had difficulty getting online since my last post!
Thanks for your input, I did try it but couldn't get consistent results. However, I have found a way that works (and that RoboHelp accepts without complaining). In case anyone else ends up with a similar problem, here's the code:
This need to go somewhere in the <head> </head> section.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pathtoflowplayerjs/flowplayer-3.1.1.min.js"></script>
<body>

<img class="splash" src="../Graphics/UI/splash.png" alt="" style="border: none;"
   border="0" />
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">flowplayer("player", {src: "http://pathtoflowplayer/flowplayer.commercial-3.1.1.swf", wmode: 'transparent'},
                //Set Product Key
                key: '#$xx00x0xxx0000xxx0x0',
                //Setup Clip options
                clip: {
                // in url: only change folder and filename to match video file path
                                url: "http://pathtovideo/myvideo.mp4",
                                autoPlay: true,
                                autoBuffering: true,
                                scaling: "fit"
                //Setup Play options
                play: {
                                label: null,
                                replayLabel: "click to play again"
);</script>
</body>
</html>
The following css tells the splash image and player to resize to the browser (or frame) and ensures that the player controls are always visible:
/* ensures that the html page and body is reset to 100 percent */
html, body {height:100%;}
/* styling for the actual flowplayer container */
div.inline-video {
            display:block;
            width:100%;
            height:84%;
            margin:0 auto;
/* styling for splash image */
img.splash {
   width:100%;
   height:auto;
(This code leaves RoboHelp feeling all warm and fuzzy and it doesn't feel the need to butcher it on output.) My thanks to everyone that has looked into this for me and I hope that it may prove useful to others in the future.
Many thanks,
Caz

The WebHelp doesn't open in Chrome using Robohelp word X5

Hello All,
I am using Robohelp X5 (very old version) to generate webhelp. They seem to work fine in all the browsers except Chrome. When i click on the help the blank pop up opens.. It does not load the content. Infact i downloaded the new version of whver.js file from Peter Grainge Snippets section. I am afraid that was for Robohelp 7... However i replaced the whver.js file generated the new output and uploaded them. Even then the Webhelp in chrome is not working..
I can see only 2 blank windows which just says "about blank" on top...
Any suggestions will be appreciated...

RoboHelp does not support Chrome, even the current version. You could see if your help works with the current version by using the trial but do not load it on your production machine as you will likely encounter problems if you revert to X5. If it does not work, you're out of luck.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

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