TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

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sforsyth
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:06 pm

TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by sforsyth »

We've upgraded to Flare 11 and are having a big problem with some of our old project settings. On the Advanced tab of the target, we selected "Use lowercase filenames", which always worked fine in Flare 10 and earlier, but in Flare 11 there seems to be bugs.

The generated HTML files have these links, which refer to both the "Skins" and the "skins" directory. This is obviously a problem for web servers that have case-sensitive file systems (Unix-based servers) but not a problem on Windows where everyone runs Flare. So, the problem only shows up after we publish the help, and is not a problem when we view the output on our Windows machines.

<link href="../../Skins/Default/Stylesheets/Slideshow.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../Skins/Default/Stylesheets/TextEffects.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../Skins/Default/Stylesheets/Topic.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/tablet.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/mobile.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/foundation.5.5.0.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/styles.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/tablet.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />
<link href="../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/mobile.css" rel="stylesheet" data-mc-generated="True" />

Does anybody have a workaround for getting around this issue? I can't publish our output with the lowercase filenames because the top nav menus aren't styled and they just show up as garbled lists. If I turn off the lowercase filenames settings, all of our existing incoming links will break. My boss won't like that. The only workaround I can think of is to manually rename the files and folders on our server after we publish, but since we publish every week that's not a great solution.

I read something in this post about possibly using some javascript to pre-load files before the header, but I couldn't quite figure out how it would apply to this case. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19086&p=100137&hili ... es#p100137
I tried importing the stylesheets (with correct capitalization) directly from my project's CSS file and that didn't work either.

Suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Sandra
sforsyth
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:06 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by sforsyth »

We submitted a bug report to MadCap for this one, but in the meantime my workaround is to duplicate the Skins folder on my web server and have a second copy of it where the names are capitalized to match the links in the generated HTML files. I'm looking into ways to pre-load the correct CSS files automatically, but this solution works well enough for now and allows us to publish our help.

- publish your help to web server that uses case-sensitive file names (linux/unix servers)
- on your web server's file system, duplicate the "Skins" folder, and rename it "skins"
- In the "skins" folder, rename subdirectories and files so their case matches the paths below

"../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/styles.css"
"../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/tablet.css"
"../../skins/default/stylesheets/components/mobile.css"
"../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/foundation.5.5.0.css"
"../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/styles.css"
"../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/tablet.css"
"../../skins/fluid/stylesheets/mobile.css"

- be sure to leave the original "Skins" folder as-is, because it gets referenced as well - if you rename the original other parts of the output will break.
ThomasH
Propeller Head
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:06 am

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by ThomasH »

Hi there!

Just a quick question - did anyone ever get in touch with you regarding this issue or are you still using your workaround?
We seem to have the same problem now that we upgraded to Flare 12, and I'm not really keen on another workaround in our project ;)

Thanks in advance!
sforsyth
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:06 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by sforsyth »

We are still using the workaround. There is an open ticket for this but I don't think it has been fixed yet :-( We haven't upgraded to Flare 12 yet, so I'm not sure if it's better or worse in the next version.

The good news about the workaround is that we don't have to do it each time we republish to the same location - only when we publish to a new location or change the skins or resources, which isn't nearly as often as we publish content. It's a hassle though.
sforsyth
Propeller Head
Posts: 25
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2015 11:06 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by sforsyth »

We worked around this issue by configuring our Apache server to use mod_speling. This causes the server to ignore case-sensitivity in file names.
ThomasH
Propeller Head
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:06 am

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by ThomasH »

Thanks for all the input.
Since the problem is still existing in Flare 2017 for us, I'll definitely have a look into that setting with our IT guys.
clpha6
Propeller Head
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu May 11, 2017 10:43 am

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by clpha6 »

Still a problem. We wrote a script to copy/rename the files as listed above, before publishing. But, also found out any "Images" subfolders need to NOT be renamed to lowercase.
clpha6
Propeller Head
Posts: 20
Joined: Thu May 11, 2017 10:43 am

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by clpha6 »

It gets worse! (This issue is logged with MadCap. They have no ETA on a fix.)

If you use the "Do not use "Content" folder in output" option, then you ALSO need to copy and manually change the case of, at least:
../resources/stylesheets/html5_styles.css [<-- not sure if I created/named this file, or if it's a default name]
../resources/scripts/page-toc.js

There might be others! So for now, I'm NOT using that "Do not use "Content" folder in output" setting.

What a hassle.
WDClark
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:45 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by WDClark »

Sandra's (former) coworker here. We're now trying to host our help on a *nix-based system and running into all kinds of hassles undoing and redoing settings to try and conquer these darn upper- and lower-case issues. This is an absolute nightmare, and it seems like such an easy fix on MadCap's part.

Why can Flare not simply check whether the "Use lower-case filenames" setting is enabled on a target and, if it is, set the folder and filenames generated by Flare during the build process to lower-case? The number of headaches you'd solve with this is immeasureable...
3lliot
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 105
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2011 8:45 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by 3lliot »

I've just run into this problem with the side navigation skin, it was driving me nuts for days - I couldn't work out why my published output was broken but the local output was fine.

Eventually I checked the Chrome console (which I should have done at the start) and found that the server was failing to load the CSS files because the topics were looking for lower-case folders and the output is in capitalised folders.

I can't switch off lower case filenames, because I have probably thousands of inbound links from other help systems & customer documentation, which will all break if I switch it off. So I can't use the side navigation skin. :x
3lliot
Sr. Propeller Head
Posts: 105
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2011 8:45 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by 3lliot »

Anyone have any updates on this?

Madcap don't appear to be very bothered about making output work on Linux servers...
WDClark
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:45 pm

Re: TopNav target styles broken when lowercase file names on

Post by WDClark »

Can confirm that this issue STILL exists in Flare 2019. Submitted yet another bug about it.

At the moment, we're stuck on Flare 2018 r1.
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