Use lowercase filenames problem

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ajpeck123
Propeller Head
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Mar 07, 2017 6:01 am

Use lowercase filenames problem

Post by ajpeck123 »

I've solved my problem (sort of) but thought I'd share to save someone else scratching their heads over it.

I have imported a lot of RoboHelp stuff into Flare. In RoboHelp, I had the "use lowercase filenames" setting ON, which worked fine. The software developers created links from each web page in the app to a page in the help. No cross-linking in the help... if your user account doesn't give you access to a configuration page, you don't see the help for it either. :)

So far so good. As I only had about a couple of dozen topics to import, I renamed a few before they got committed to source control. While I was renaming, I changed them to all lowercase. This meant that during my initial testing on Flare, I didn't use the "Use lowercase filenames" setting. I did, however, select "Do not use "Content" folder in output" - just cutting down the length of the paths, no other reason.

Now I've imported a whole bunch more topics from a different project. I *really* don't want to have to rename them all manually to sort out the case - and the software developers don't want to redo all their links. So I used the setting to use lowercase filenames.

Files aren't really the issue - the topic files converted fine. But the folders were a bit of a mixed bag. I didn't notice any problem because I'm running on Windows, but the application the help files are for is running on Linux. Case is definitely an issue!

In each topic file, I have a set of links to resources in the 'head' section of the file. Two of them are:
<link href="../resources/stylesheets/mainstyles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="../Resources/Scripts/custom.modernizr.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I have "Resources" with a capital 'R' and "resources" with a lowercase 'r', both ../ from current location. Not an issue on Windows, but Linux threw its toys out of the pram and refused to play.

I asked support... and was told (1) the folders not in the Content bit don't get renamed (I took that to mean the Content Explorer bit... if I could see them there, they would be renamed, and it was even confirmed that the Resources folder holding the stylesheets WOULD be; (2) there were two 'resources' folders and only one was altered... I could only find one; (3) the one with the scripts in doesn't get renamed, the one with the stylesheet in does... at which point I gave up, as it's not possible (in Windows) to have two folders of the same name in the same location that only differ in capitalisation. Unfortunately, it wasn't spotted that there wasn't a "content" in the paths anywhere, and I didn't understand that that was the cause of the problem.

So, the moral of the story... if you want to set "Use lowercase filenames", you've got to have a "Content" folder or the "Resources" folder provided in Content Explorer is merged with the one containing the scripts. The setting to change case only affects the files and folder inside the "content" folder (or that would be inside that folder if you generated one). If you *don't* generate the "content" folder, standard Windows behaviour when you copy a folder to a location where there is already a folder of that name is simply to merge the contents. I'm guessing the "Resources" one was created first, so "stylesheets" was simply copied into it. I imagine renaming the Resources folder in Content Explorer would work too... but I'd have to remember to do that (and to the same name) each time I created a project.

That's taken the best part of a day to sort out... so if I can save someone else the headache... :wink:
Alison
Lone technical author - Flare user since March 2017
Currently using Flare 2020
clpha6
Propeller Head
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu May 11, 2017 10:43 am

Re: Use lowercase filenames problem

Post by clpha6 »

Thanks for posting! I came across this/similar problem a couple of weeks ago, when it was pointed out to me that all but my first page were NOT formatted at all! (Someone else had previously posted my help files, and I'm guessing they automatically fixed the errors without letting me know, because formatting was never an issue until now.) They ended up writing a script to copy/rename the folders/files once they're on Linux. But the /Images folders within the folders listed in the thread I linked should NOT be renamed to lowercase. Ugh, what a pain.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=26435&p=124866
RGoerlich
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Dec 31, 2013 2:19 am

Re: Use lowercase filenames problem

Post by RGoerlich »

Just a remark to this "lowercase filenames problem":
I'm creating HTML5 output and have to merge some projects. There are some links from one subproject to another too.
As I activates the option "lowercase filenames" the auto syncronisation of the TOC didn't work if the link pointed to another subproject.
The reason was, that all links were created with upper/lower cases but now the filenames uses only lowercase.
After disabling the option "lowercase filenames" everything worked fine again.
Perhaps the info can help too to prevent headache ...

Greetings
Ralf
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