.AIR output

[Techno]

The developers I'm authoring HTML Help for are porting their Windows application from Windows to Apple Mac.

My understanding is that Flare can produce .air files, but I'd appreciate if someone could either point me to some sort of Knowledge Base article on the subject, or perhaps provide some advice on the process.

I did (allegedly) manage to create a .air output, but the software guys response was as follows:-

"Once downloaded, I was able to do nothing with it until I also downloaded and installed Adobe AIR. That’s not a surprise in and of itself.

"But now, Adobe AIR insists on treating your file as an application installer – and a corrupted one at that. I’m able to get nothing but a few seconds of “installing” progress bar motion followed by an error message."

[RamonS]

The AIR output is really just a .air package that gets inflated (installed) on the user's system. The main benefit is that help comes in a single file rather than dozens or even hundreds or thousands as with WebHelp. Speaking of which, why not use WebHelp?

[Techno]

We really want a single-file - for a whole variety of reasons. One is that the automated build process of the main software sucessfully compiles into various platforms from Linux to Windows. Hence .air is ideal for what we require.

[RamonS]

What I'd do is create the .air package and make sure that it works. Try it on a test system first. Maybe the installer of the application packaged it up in a weird way, there could be rights issues. I've tried it once with a test project and it worked OK for me, but what I recall to happen is that once the .air package is installed you end up with the same bazillion files as for WebHelp. It isn't as if the .air package behaves like a CHM.
Try it again and if it fails again call support.

[Techno]

Clearly something is amiss. On both my Windows 7 Pro 64 and on the MAC, when you run the .air it first displays "Getting Ready to install this application" with a progress bar about 1/6th of the way.
Then a really helpful message appears!! "Sorry, an error has occurred. The application could not be installed because the installer file is damaged. Try obtaining a new installer file from the application author."
The project compiles without reporting any errors, and creates a single .air file.
Unless anyone has any bright ideas, I guess I'll just have to use up one of my support calls.
George.

[nickatwork]

Almost guarantee that it is related to installation rights.
.air is basically a .exe and windows sees it as such, after isntalling for a little while, but not actually doing anything, it hits that error.

I had it myself for a long while before I figured it out. It was saying my project was corrupt, to get a newer version. Sometimes it said I wasn't an admin during install, but once that error came up as you mentioned, it would always be the same, and would always be related to installation issues.

Its the reason that we avoided using AIR. Its great, and works really well, as long as you users have installation rights on their machines. If theyre in a corporate offie, most likely they wont, this also affects updates that you push out. Unfortunately, even if you manage to get an admin to install it on every machine, once that user logs on and runs an update, they wont be able to do it because they wont have the rights. I dont think AIR has been updated to allow this 'update' without install rights option.

[Techno]

I feel much better now, since at least I'm not alone in seeing this issue - and you're even just down the road from us.
Ironically I'm the only user, and **should** have full admin rights - but we all know what that usually means!
I've raised a case with Madcap - whose first question was to ask what version of AIR have I installed? (It's 2.5.1)

[nickatwork]

If you want to be really sneaky, take the file home, install AIR runtime on a home PC that you know you have the rights for, then try and install the help......if it gives you the same error even then it may be something else.....you could test it further by downloading some other help files or AIR installers and seeing if they work.

I very much doubt its a problem with your help and how its been compiled, and more likely to be an AIR issue. Try uninstall/reinstall the AIR runtime too....

[Techno]

I've raised a Support Case, but no resolution as yet.

However as part of the test process I did build a very simple project from scratch, and compiled that. It worked on both Windows 7 (x64), Vista (32 bit) and our developer's MAC system.

So pending further investigation, our own conclusion is that there has to be something in the Flare project which the AIR installer does not like, and which it's not reporting.

So it's down to needles and haystacks at the moment.

[nickatwork]

Well at least AIR works....sort of....perhaps something 'special' in your project thats causing a headache? Embedded PDFs? Custom Scripts?

Hard to know if its down to a topic or a project setting.

You could try...

Create a new target, set it to generate the AIR for just one simple topic, the first one for example. See if that installs. If it does, then it could be a topic causing the error. Then split the project into 2 targets, the halving will let you quickly narrow in on which topic is causing it to break.

If they all fail to install, then its probably a project issue where you might be able to dig through settings to fix it.

[Techno]

Perhaps I'm being a shade to hard here, but given the cost of two Flare Licenses, and two Gold Support Contracts, I don't mind doing some investigative work, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

The main project is biggish, but simple. (Content folder contains 1,271 files - 23MB) The majority of end users are either blind, or teachers, hence we have avoided any special effects. It works perfectly for HTML and Word output, and has done almost since Flare was released.

I'm afraid this is rather reminiscent of my favourite Windows error, which essentially says, "An error has ocurred - see your administrator"

WELL I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!

[nickatwork]

haha, oh well....good luck with the support call. Let us know what they find out.

[Techno]

Well, surprise, surprise! It appears that the Adobe AIR installer does not like "Reserved Characters" such as ampersands in file names, contained in just one of mine called "Registration_&_Licensing.htm".

However, in the Target's Properties for AIR, in the "Advanced" section, is a check box labelled, "Replace reserved characters with underscores in filenames".

WARNING however: Flare's "(quick help)" by this item effectively suggests that many characaters such as non-English vowels and Asian characters will be replaced.

Fat lot of use that is when part of the project deals with producing braille in over 130 languages and contains Unicode tables! So it's a file name change, as well as a change in the program code.

And wouldn't it have been nice if AIR's installer actually gave you some kind of clue as to the problem?

[nickatwork]

Good to know.

I never use special characters in file names. Things like this always happen, even leave out spaces and capital letters these days.

Error messages always end up being written by developers and not normal people.....thems the breaks huh.

Least you got a solution.