How to force lowercase filenames in WebHelp output

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kevinmcl
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How to force lowercase filenames in WebHelp output

Post by kevinmcl »

Hi all.

This'll be embarrassing when the answers flood in, but I'm not seeing it in the Flare 2 Help Search, nor in previous topics in this forum, so....

In RoboHelp, there's an option to force all output filenames to lowercase, for benefit of certain unforgiving operating systems.

Where is that done in Flare?

I've got a WebHelp project imported from RH that's bristling with mixed-case filenames, and I need to have 'em all made lowercase in the published output.
By the way, if there's a way to force filenames to lowercase within the project - while maintaining the integrity of links, that's fine, too. I don't need 'em mixed case; it's just the way that many of them happen to be already.

Thanks,

Kevin
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LTinker68
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Post by LTinker68 »

There is no such option in Flare yet, but there have been feature requests submitted for the same reason you specified (picky web servers). I suggest you submit a feature request as well to http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx. Supposedly, the more of us who request something, the better the odds it will be implemented sooner rather than later.
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Lisa
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Richard Ferrell
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Post by Richard Ferrell »

Just an FYI, Flare's XML is Case Senstive This is an XML Standard so if you Type in Upper and Lower Case in your File names or Hyperlinks then Flare will keep these in, Some Unix Servers are Case Senstive also so you will need to be sure that your calls match the Upper and Lower case also.

I have added your name to the Feature request to force Flare To only use Lower Case when creating webhelp
Richard Ferrell

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kevinmcl
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Post by kevinmcl »

Dang!

So, right now I've got a \"cross-platform\" WebHelp system that really only works on one or two platforms (Win and maybe Lin, but not Sol, HP, AIX), and if I want to fix it, I have to go through by hand, renaming files?

What's the suggested procedure, via Flare, so that all links are updated when the filename changes?
If I just go into Content Organizer, highlight-and-change, will the name changes be propagated to all necessary places? Or am I looking at a huge amount of hand-updating of links?

At first glance, that sounds too obvious, but then RoboHelp had the \"force lowercase\" option long before you guys left to build Flare, so you can understand why I'd be concerned about implications if you didn't regard that feature important enough to include by the second major version of your product... :-)

After all, isn't at least half the target audience for Flare the current/recently-former users of RH?


Kevin (looking to avoid extra work if he can)
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kevinmcl
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Post by kevinmcl »

And as a follow-up...

It's not just I who was too dumb to be aware of the mixed-case problem, when creating my topic filenames... and later too lax or overconfident as I continued to do so for convenience/ease-of-reading, when I could depend on the RH output option to strip away the caps.

Various programs create files (such as graphics) and the output files have names created like \"somepic.PNG\", \"otherpic.JPG\", etc. (Yes, blame Windoze... I do... :o)

So, I'm going to be at this a-a-a-a-aaalllll day.

Kevin
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LTinker68
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Re:

Post by LTinker68 »

kevinmcl wrote:What's the suggested procedure, via Flare, so that all links are updated when the filename changes?
If I just go into Content Organizer, highlight-and-change, will the name changes be propagated to all necessary places? Or am I looking at a huge amount of hand-updating of links?
If you rename a file within Flare and you have links to that file (even from the TOC), then Flare will ask if you want to update all the links. Click YES at that point.
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Lisa
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kevinmcl
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Post by kevinmcl »

Yes, been doing (about a hundred so far, before my latest crash).

But I've been waiting to discover the \"gotcha\" that'll bite me on the butt... to mix a metaphor or two.

\"Oh, well you have to set the thingummie before you change a bunch of filenames, or Flare ignores all whozits when updating links...\"


Kevin (not a cynic, not a cynic... just keep repeating that... not a cyn.... oh hell... :o)
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Brokenwolf
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Post by Brokenwolf »

I've been through this as well, and it is not as simple as just naming all the topics and images... ALL the files need to be named in lower case. This applies to the frame pages, javascripts, etc. too.
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