MadCap Software Forums

Hi, Dave,

See this article for instructions on how to add the title bar text:

Specifying the Caption for the Output Window

However, if there is mismatch between the language of your help file and that of your operating system, the title bar of the help window always contains the words "HTML ...

Hi, Dave,

I can't answer your question, but, for what it's worth, you can use this tool to check cross-CHM links:

http://helpware.net/downloads/index.htm#CHMLinkChecker

Pete

Hi, Ashley,

Your MJ's Help Report looks good to me; there's nothing in it to indicate why you are generating corrupt .chm files.

Can you successfully compile a .chm file with HTML Help Workshop (C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop\hhw.exe)? If you can, this may suggest that your Flare installation ...

Hi, Ashley,

It may be worth running MJ's Help Diagnostics to verify that all the HTML Help compiler components are properly installed on your computer. You can download this utility from here:

http://helpware.net/downloads/index.htm#MJs

Perhaps you can attach the report generated by MJ's Help ...

Hi, Joan,

If this is compiled HTML Help (.chm), here is a thread in which I describe several ways to channel all context help calls through the parent .chm file to the children:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6463&p=35098#p35098

This article may also help:

http ...

Hi, Raphael,

Does anything in this newsgroup discussion help?

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.helpauthoring/browse_thread/thread/44528795c7ec44c6

For the references to the index (.hhk) file, you can substitute the contents (.hhc) file.

There's some more information on ...

Hi, Marie-Claire,

Have a look at these articles:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669980(VS.85).aspx#20
http://helpware.net/htmlhelp/hhfindingtext.htm

Unfortunately, there's no configuration setting that you can use to set the initial state of the "Match similar words" and "Search ...

Hi, Robin,

What do your Link elements look like? If you're using the ms-its: type links, is there a forward slash preceding the name of the style sheet? I believe that this link should normally be fine:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="ms-its:YourChildFile.chm:: / YourStyleSheet.css" type="text/css ...

Hi, Robin,

If you view the HTML source of a topic in the child file — right-click the topic pane of the help window and then click View Source on the context menu — how is the style sheet linked to the topic? You should have an element like this at the start of the topic:

<link rel ...

Hi, Michael,

OK I got it to work by specifying a local file with value=",file://localhost/C:/, and the full path to the file on my machine.

That's quite odd, as I was able to specify a relative path without any problem in my test file (which wasn't created with Flare, for what it's worth).

Yes ...

Hi, Michael,

This isn't as straightforward as you might wish. See this earlier thread:

Adding a target to Jump Button URL

Pete

Hi, Michael,

Try renaming or deleting the file hh.dat, which you should find in the hidden folder %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help. So, typically:

C:\Documents and Settings\MichaelC\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help

It seems that if you restore the toolbar button text labels ...

Hi, Gary,

The toolbar buttons in the foremost window have wrapped around because their combined width exceeds the width of the help window. This isn't the case with the window at the back because its toolbar buttons have no text labels, and the middle window lacks the two custom buttons and their ...

Hi,

You can always use the .hhp file that Flare creates and recompile that after tweaking the settings in HTML Help Workshop. I do not know if you can set compression there, but in the end Flare does not create CHMs natively. Flare creates an HTML Help Workshop project that then gets compiled by ...

Hi, Gary,

The decompile works rather nicely and very quickly for such a large amount of files - 3 minutes or so - but I don't get an .hhp file back - just toc and index. Is this as expected? Or am I doing something wrong?

If you decompile with KeyTools ( http://www.keyworks.net/keytools.htm ...

Hi, Marie Claire,

I don't know what is achievable within Flare, but you can usually compact a .chm file by a further 10% or more by recompiling it with KeyTools, which is available from here:

http://www.keyworks.net/keytools.htm

This is what KeyTools' help file says about the recompile feature ...

Hi, breyni,

See if this Knowledge Base article helps:

Patch for HTML Help Issues in Flare 3.1

As I understand it, by applying PATF3102 or the subsequent PATF3103, you can stop Flare from specifying the full path to style sheets and images. However, this has the disadvantage that you may now ...

Hi, Marie-Claire,

Do the target URLs of your TOC entries contain anchors ( FileName .htm# anchor )?

If this is the case, and you browse to topics by clicking hyperlinks that don't contain those anchors, the help viewer can't resolve the mismatch between the two URLs and so disables the Locate ...

Hi, Janet,

The reason why this problem arises is described in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 830609 .

I believe that Flare 3.1 and later provides an option with which you can implement the workaround described in the Microsoft article. See this thread for details:

http://forums.madcapsoftware ...

Hi, Nicola,

Is this the same redirect.xhtm file that is described on the Helpware site ? In that case, I don't believe you need to give the file a ".xhtm" extension; ".htm" should be fine.

The idea of using the ".xhtm" extension is to prevent the redirector topic from appearing in the results when ...

Hi, again,

Yes, that's exactly right. The aim is not to exceed the 550 limit on the number of "include" statements in any one TOC and the 1148 limit on the number of file names in any one [MERGE FILES] list. A help collection that comprises one master file and multiple slaves, each with multiple ...

Hi, Jodie,

There are some limits on the number of slave .chm files that you can merge into a master .chm file. It used to be the case (and maybe still is) that the TOC of a master file could contain a maximum of 550 "include" statements to the slave files. Similarly, the [MERGE FILES] section of ...

Hi, Cecily,

Programmers can set the size of the help window when they pass calls to a .chm file. Is it possible that your application is setting the initial window size?

What happens if you delete or rename the file hh.dat in the hidden folder %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\HTML Help ...

Hi, Jodie,

It sounds like you may need to post-process your master .chm file outside Flare. That is:


Build the master .chm file with Flare. Don't include in its TOC those slaves that you don't want to appear there.
In Windows Explorer, browse to the output folder where Flare has stored the ...

Hi, John,

I'm glad that you got it sorted.

Just a small word of caution about decompiling .chm files: this isn't a "round-trip" process, as some features that were compiled into the original files are not recoverable when you decompile. For example, I think you'll lose context help mappings and ...