Flare is adding relative paths to external topic hyperlinks

[rhofitz]

Hi,

We have links to topics outside our Flare projects. To insert the link, we use the Insert HyperLinks Dialog box, select External Topic and then type in the the following path:

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/help/topic/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm

After I generate the WebHelp, and view the source for the generated HTML, the href is as follows:

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<a href="../../help/topic/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm">

I want Flare to stop adding the ../.. to the path.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Rhonda Fitzgerald

[RamonS]

You could try inserting the link as a link to a web page and specify the URL.

[LTinker68]

I want Flare to stop adding the ../.. to the path.

If it's an external link then you need an absolute path, e.g., http://www.yourcompany.com/help/topic/c ... yright.htm. You gave it a relative path, so Flare is actually doing the correct thing by adding the ../../. Selecting "External Topic" doesn't really tell Flare anything -- it just changes the options it gives you in the screen.

[rhofitz]

You could try inserting the link as a link to a web page and specify the URL.

I worked with T.S a bit on this today. This is one of the things we tried. It didn't work. I am not actually trying to go to a Web page. I am linking to an .htm file outside of this project. The workaround was to insert a javascript:

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<a onClick="window.open ('/help/topic/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm','_self');">

Flare does not add the paths in the HTML output when this is done.

We are creating these links for Eclipse help (to do cross-help plugin links). Eclipse requires the links to be setup a certain way. The newest and recommended way (which I just found out) is to use PLUGINS_ROOT (instead of /help/topic/) For example:

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PLUGINS_ROOT/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm

So, I tried entering this into the hyperlink db and Flare does not add the ../../

If I precede it with a slash:

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/PLUGINS_ROOT/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm

Then, Flare DOES add the ../../ in the output. So, its that first slash that is triggering Flare to add the ../../ to the code. Fortunately, if I use PLUGINS_ROOT, then I don't need the first slash and the links will work inside of Eclipse.

Another caveat to this is when I add this same hyperlink on a master page (which is what I am trying to do in this case), Flare changes it to the following in the HTML output:

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<a href="../Resources/MasterPages/PLUGINS_ROOT/com.openedge.pdt.getstart.help/html/copyright.htm">copyright</a>

So, there seem to be a couple of different issues going on. (1) An external topic link that begins with a slash causes Flare to add ../../ to the output code and (2) when used on a master page Flare adds paths to the code.

[LTinker68]

Hmmm. See if you can create a variable that contains the path you want, then insert the variable name in the correct spot in the masterpage. Hopefully Flare will treat the value of the variable as a string and therefore won't do anything to it. I've never actually tried putting a variable as a property in a tag, so I'm not sure it'll work.

[RamonS]

You could also put the files exactly where Flare wants them to be. Giving in is often the smarter way.

[LTinker68]

I don't know what Eclipse is, but if it requires files to be in a specific location, then I'm betting that won't work.

[RamonS]

As far as I know Eclipse is a development environment. And if it is so demanding that some files are in a specific place one could make a copy.