Using RoboHelp 2019

You can link to a topic in another project if exactly the same topic is required in multiple projects, create it in one project and link to it in others.

What is important is that in the Contents panel of the project with the linked file, it is at the same folder level as it is in the project with the original topic. If you create the link elsewhere, the reference to the CSS will not work.

The topic can be wherever you want in the TOC, that does not have to mirror the original project.

I believe I have understood the underlying logic of DCF and based on that, I have reported the following issues. See the Bug Report for any responses.

I have attached a zip file to the report with a project and document showing and describing the issues.

1] If groups are not used and the TOC has the same tags applied as the topics, then DCF does work as expected.

2] I understand that some users have reasons for not also tagging the TOC although I do not understand the scenario. However, in the document and project in the attached project, the TOC is showing one topic but not two others with the same tagging. That seems to be inconsistent.

3] When groups are used, the document sets out my understanding of how the filtering should work. Responsive is working but frameless is not working the same way.

4] If a topic is excluded, any content within it that has different tagging can still appear. Only that content is shown and you are left wondering what is happening. Surely a topic tag should override any content tags?

5] If the Allow Multiple Selection in Groups is selected, it correctly affects filtering without groups. You might want filtering without groups but only allow one option to be selected. It would be better labelled as Allow Multiple Selection.

There is an issue with outputs other than English. The workaround is described below.

In Output mode go to Synonyms.

Click Done to open this dialog.

Type "a" under Word then press the Tab key and type "a" under Synonyms.

Save the file. You can then delete the entry and save again. Your project should now generate.

If you have more than one project then you can manually copy yourlanguage.syn file (for example de.DE.syn) to publish\languages\synonyms subdirectory in all the projects. You can avoid all the steps above.If you have more than one project then you can manually copy yourlanguage.syn file to publish\languages\synonyms subdirectory in all the projects. You can avoid all the steps above.

See this forum thread for later information.

The correct solution would be to point the popup direct to the image. However there are currently some issues with that as described in this RoboHelp Forum topic.

Here is a workaround based on code provided by Adobe. Instead of linking the popup to an image you link to a topic containing only that image.

STEP ONE

Create a separate CSS named image.css or similar for the popup topics. Strip all content and replace with the definitions below.

body {

overflow: hidden;

margin: 0pt;

padding: 0pt;

}

div.image {}

STEP TWO

1] Create a topic and delete the existing CSS in Properties > Topic > Style Sheets.

2] Replace it with image.css.

3] Delete RoboHelp's default content so that there is then just one empty line in the topic.

4] With the cursor in that line, go to Styles > Div Styles and apply the image div style.

5] Drag the image to that line or use the Insert Image icon.

6] Save and close the topic. I suggest you save these popup topics in their own folder.

STEP THREE

1] Open the topic that is to have the link.

2] Create and select the link text.

3] Click the Insert Link toolbar icon and in Contents locate the popup topic.

4] Select Custom Sized Popup and set the dimensions to the size of the image.

STEP FOUR

Generate the output and test. You should see your image with no spacing around it. In Preview the image may be clipped but it is what is in the generated output that matters.

In Classic versions, such links would still work. That is not the case with 2019 New UI. This has been reported. Meantime, the following steps appear to work.

1. Open 2019 Classic
2. Create a folder called say ImportDocName.
3. Import the document into that folder.
4. Close Classic.
5. Open 2019.
6. Create a folder named as you wish.
7. Right click the folder and click Import > HTML file.
8. Browse to the ImportDocName folder created in Classic and select all the topics.

At the moment this cannot be done in the skin editor. It will be added in an update so check in the skin editor first.

Meantime use File Explorer and locate the Publish > Skins folder of your project. Open the layoutdiff.css for your frameless output.

Go to the .RH-LAYOUT-LEFTPANEL-container section and add the min-width and max-width declarations with the values you want.

.RH-LAYOUT-LEFTPANEL-container {

min-width:25rem;

max-width:25rem;

}

Update 11 added a new option. Previously a default time was set for the process to download any external resources that were going into the PDF. For most projects that worked fine but it caused issues for some. In the preset there is now a Download Timeout setting in the PDF fields. It is set to 200ms by default and that will be fine for most projects. If your project will not generate, increase the time in steps until it does.

To open a web page

To open a web page, use File Explorer to locate homepagefooter.htm and topicfooter.htm in your source files. Open them in a text or HTML editor. You will see www.example.com for each link. Change that to the web page URL that you want.

To open a topic within your project

1. Create your topic in the root of the project. Check Exclude from Search in Properties.
   
2. Add the topic to the TOC so that it uploads. Check Hide In Output in Properties.
   
3. Using File Explorer, locate homepagefooter in the source files. It should be in publish/skins/skinname.
4. Open it in a text or HTML editor and change www.example.com to the relative path as it will be in the output.
   With the topic in the root, the link will be ..\..\yourtopicname.htm. You can set the full URL if you prefer.
5. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for topicfooter.htm.
6. Save, generate and publish.

Re Step 1 - Creating your topic in the root makes the subsequent steps easier. You don't have to exclude the topic from search results but why would you want a user to find it that way?

Re Step 2 - Topics only get into the output if they are in the TOC. That's how 2019 works. You don't want the users to see it there so check Hide in Output.

In the demo I have only set up the Contact Us link but they all work the same way.

Click here to see the demo.

Click here to download the project.

See this forum thread

For the line spacing between TOC Items amend pdf.css as below.

For the whole TOC

p.pdf-toc {

line-height: 1.0;

}

For a particular level

p.pdf-toc-level1 {

line-height: 1.0;

}

The default value is 2.0 for line-height of each TOC item.

See this forum thread. Note that it will not work in a Frameless skin and many sites do not allow their pages to be opened in a frame.

This is the code for the table where I found the problem. Remove the attribute border-"1" and the PDF will be OK.

<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" style="border-collapse:collapse;width:100%;border-width:1px;border-style:none;border-color:transparent">

Many issues and enhancements have been issued during the lifetime of RoboHelp 2019 New UI. If you are having problems, the first thing to do is check you have the latest update applied. Click Help > Updates.

Click here for a full list of what has been fixed.