Import compiled Web help

[RamonS]

Sometimes things take an interesting twist and I am now officially back in a tech writer position...while still doing my QA job. Anyhow, the back story is irrelevant.

I am faced with the task to take a compiled HTML help system (created with WebWorks from a Framemaker source....which we do not have) and import it into Flare so that we can at least maintain it for now. Edits to existing topics can be done by editing the existing HTML files, but adding topics and have them show up in the ToC would require hacking the WebWorks created files by hand.

Does anyone have any good tips on how to proceed? The goal here is to put something together that is presentable and does not look like a total hot mess....although how could one tell when looking at what WebWorks pumps out.

Of course, the timeline is tight, release is in two weeks and I was asked about this yesterday.

[Nita Beck]

So by "compiled help system", you mean a .CHM file, right?

You can create a new project by importing from a .CHM. I expect, as with the importation of any legacy content, you'll have a lot of clean up to do. But I suspect that you'll get a workable TOC, hyperlinks and bookmarks will be preserved, images should be preserved... But I have no idea what the CSS might look like. Actually, that'll probably be preserved, too, but I suspect you'll want to clean that up, too.

[RamonS]

Ooops, sorry for not being precise enough. With "compiled HTML" I mean WebHelp. It is the output from WebWorks. If it was a CHM I could decompile it and get a messy but at least maintainable project.

My plan for now is to drag a few of the HTML files into Flare, build a ToC and see what happens.

[RamonS]

I was able to pull in all pages using the HTML file import, which worked surprisingly well. Sadly, that import did not pull in any of the images. If that would have happened I could have created something presentable within a day or so, now I am looking at least at a week's worth of work. I guess I will have to do that eventually just to get us to where we were before, but looking at the content my advise now is to throw everything away and start from scratch. That's a different discussion....