Came into work yesterday, the last day of 2009. I downed a couple of Pepsis, opened Dreamweaver, created a new file, wrote some content, closed the DW file. Opened up RoboHelp HTML 7. File ==> Import File ==> [selected the file] and completed the process of importing the .HTM into my large-ish project. Set up the Table of Contents (TOC) entry for the new file. I like browse sequences so I went into Tools ==> Browse Sequence Editor, click "Auto-create using TOC", RH does its magic, click Ok, and Wham! RH bombs out.
Tried the same process multiple times. Same answer. Insanity began to creep in, so I decided to try something else.
I left RoboHelp closed. I thought, "Hey, I have FAR on this PC and it has a TOC editor." I opened FAR, went to open the .hhc file. I noticed there was a ~*.hhc file in the directory. I deleted it, since it was a temp file, and opened the .hhc in FAR. FAR did not bomb. I viewed the .hcc file in Notepad. It looked okay.
Encouraged by this chain of events, I closed the .hhc file in Notepad and returned to RoboHelp. I re-opened the project in RH HTML 7. I returned to the scene of the crime
Fixed! RH didn't bomb!
What I learned is that if you are having issues with browse sequences in RH HTML 7, make sure there isn't a ~*.hhc file in the directory. That could be causing your issue. I do know that if I wouldn't have tried to open the .hhc file directly in FAR, I never would have discovered the ~*.hhc file and I would have cursed, even though that'd be okay because I'm giving up cursing in 2010 and I still had over 12 hours to "foul and filth, filth and foul, filth", to quote Bill Cosby.
I also reached a milestone of sorts. I have long used span class = programname for all of my HTML text that I wanted to be bold. If it was a menu option, a program name, a navigation path, a field name, file names, anything I wanted to be bold, I used span class = programname. I decided that if I ever wanted to really *really* use the power of CSS and styling, I should have a separate span class for each thing I would want to be bold. I created a bunch of new styles. Right now, they are defined identically. I have a span class for menu options, for a program name, navigation path, field names, file names; all these things that I would have blindly used span class = programname for, now have a specific span class tag.
This shows all the references to programname in my files. As you can see, I am just under 30,000 changes left.
This screenshot shows the Top Ten files that have the most changes:
I am using regular expressions to make my life easier, but it is still a lot of work. The end result is that I will have better CSS and better HTML in my work files.
My personal goal is to be done with this project by Friday, January 29, 2010. I do not want it to drag out much past that because the next release of our software should be finalized prior to the end of February and I know there are going to be a lot of time-consuming projects between now and then.
Updated on 3/6/2010: Nope, did not make my 1/29/10 self-imposed deadline. This has taken a lower priority number and has settled in the back of my mind...
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