Topic Editors

What's covered?

This topic describes how to set up RoboHelp so that when you double click certain topics, they automatically open in the required editor rather than the default editor. It avoids having to remember the topics you do not want to open in RoboHelp for some reason.

 

These steps are the result of some joint research by Rick Stone and myself. The need to be able to do this came up in a forum post which lead to Rick Stone asking me to check some of his findings. While Rick poked around some more, I found out a few other things. This is the result of our joint efforts.

First you need to make the editor known to RH so that it appears in the list when you right click and select Edit With. Skip steps 1 - 6 if that editor is already in the Edit With list.

In this example I will add UltraEdit which is my preferred text editor, but it could be any application you use to edit topics.

  1. Select Tools | Options | HTML Editors.
  2. You will see the applications that already appear in the list. Click Add to add a new one.
  3. Under Name, type the name of the application as you want it to appear in the list.


  4. Click to the right under path and then click the button that will appear. (Don't worry if the name of the application disappears at this point.)

  5. Browse to the exe file for the application and click Open.
  6. You will return to the Options dialog. Click Apply to keep the dialog open. If you were to close the dialog now, that application would be in your list of applications available from Edit With.

Now you need to get RH ready to recognise this editor when double clicking topics rather than just when using Edit With.

  1. Click the Auto Select button just above the Help button in the Options dialog.

  2. Click Yes to the warning that will display and leave the check box unticked.
  3. If your editor is already set up here, just make a note of the Generator Tag. Otherwise click Add and in the dropdown list and select the editor you have just added.

  4. Click to the right and under Generator Tag, type in "<a name you will put in topics that are to use this editor>", for example <UltraEdit>. It can be any text you want.
  5. Click OK to both dialogs.

Now you need to set up the topics that are to use different editors.

  1. Double click the topic to open it in the RH WYSIWYG editor and switch to the True Code view.
  2. Locate the line in the <head> section
    <meta name=generator content="RoboHELP by eHelp Corporation - www.ehelp.com">
  3. Delete the text in quotes and enter the text you recorded in step 10, for example "UltraEdit".
  4. Stay in True Code view and click Save. Do not return to the WYSIWYG view otherwise RH will undo step 14.
  5. Double click any other topic.

Next time you double click the topic you edited, it will open in your preferred editor. You will get a warning that it may already be open in the other editor. Check that it is not and then click OK. You can of course, tick the warning box if you prefer but bear in mind it is a non reversible change from within RoboHelp. Rick has found that it can be restored via the registry, hop over to his site at www.robowizard.com for the details.

Tip

In Step 9, you may have noticed that the generator tag <none> is associated with RH WYSIWYG. That means that if a topic has no generator tag line (see Step 13), it will open in the RH WYSIWYG editor.

You can change the editor if you prefer such topics to open in some other application, just select it from the dropdown list to the left of <none>.

Donations

If you find the information and tutorials on my site save you time figuring it out for yourself and help improve what you produce, please consider making a small donation.

Topic Revisions

Date

Changes to this page
27 Jan 2005 New topic.