30-character limit no longer applies?

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cindynotbrady
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30-character limit no longer applies?

Unread post by cindynotbrady »

I used to get a message when I tried to link to another help file if the help file had topic id's that were more than 30 characters. I no longer get that message. I recently upgraded my copy to professional, but the rest of the members on my team are still using standard. Would that make a difference, or was it because we downloaded the latest installs of 4? Yes, we will be upgrading to 6 when the new budget comes in (Jan. 1). But until then, I was just curious of the change. I'm having a meeting with my writers on Thursday, and I'd like to share with them this information, since I have told them to always limit their help to 30 characters or less, otherwise, we couldn't link to other help files.

Thanks!

P.S. The error only occured when linking to another .hmx file, not another .chm file.
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Tim Green
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Re: 30-character limit no longer applies?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Cindy,

In Help & Manual 4 there is an uncorrectable issue in the editor engine that can cause errors under some circumstances when topic IDs have exactly 31 characters or multiples of 31 characters. This is why the 30-character limit was imposed. This can't be changed in HM4, so you should definitely continue to observe this limit even if you are not getting the warning message for any reason. Here is the original support text on this issue, which continues to apply if you are using HM 4:

Original support text:

You are are running up against an inherent problem in the topic ID naming system, which means that it is necessary to avoid topic IDs with a length of 31 characters or multiples of 31 characters (62, 93 etc).

If topic A has an ID that is exactly 31 characters long and you then rename topic B to have an ID that is exactly the same plus a couple of additional characters you will not be able to save the topic. This is caused by an error in the Borland Delphi treeview component that H&M uses here. This would be relatively easy to fix but unfortunately doing this would break existing H&M4 projects. You can reproduce this problem by performing the following steps on a test project:

1: Enter "0123456789012345678901234567890" as the Topic ID for one topic (without the quotes).

2: Enter "0123456789012345678901234567890_1" as the ID of another topic.

You will then get the "Failed to save current topic" message when you try to save or move away from the current topic. If this happens the solution is to IMMEDIATELY make a change anywhere in the first 31 characters of the topic that failed to save. For example, if you change the ID of the second topic above to:

012345678901234567890123456789x_1

it will solve the problem. The easiest way is to do this BEFORE you move away from the topic with the problem ID. However, so long as you do it before closing or saving your project you can also repair it even after moving away. You just need to select the topic and click away the message saying that it does not exist. The content of the topic should still be visible -- then just change its ID to anything else (xxx or whatever) and save to recover it.

After doing this it is possible that you will have a few dead links to the topic because the internal link updating system won't work properly while the topic is in "limbo". But you won't lose your topic content.

This is an annoying problem, but as I explained we can't fix it entirely without breaking a large number of people's existing projects, because the problem in the Delphi component was discovered after the release of H&M4. (We would have to change the internal structure of the topic IDs.) However, H&M does trap the error when it occurs -- this is why you get the failed to save error message -- and if you correct the topic ID immediately you should not have any problems.

The only real solution at the moment is to avoid topic IDs that are 31 characters (or multiples of 31 characters) long. I know that this is easier said than done, but that's the way it is, unfortunately... :((
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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cindynotbrady
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Re: 30-character limit no longer applies?

Unread post by cindynotbrady »

My problem never appeared when creating topics, it only appeared when linking to other help files that did have more than 30 characters for topic ids within the help file. I would get an error message and it wouldn't show any of the individual topics within an hmx file. I'd paste a screen shot, but I no longer get that error message, so I'm assuming it was fixed. Even so, I will pass along the 31 character tip.
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Tim Green
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Re: 30-character limit no longer applies?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Cindy,

I understand that, but as a general rule you should either avoid IDs longer than 30 characters entirely in HM4 (easiest solution), or take care that they are never multiples of 31 (easy to forget...).
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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