With some child chm's the master TOC does not unfold

[Baum&Help]

Hi,

In a modular project calls by index to topics in child chm-files do show up, but the TOC of the master does not unfold the addressed child topic.
Strangely enough it does work by chm files from third parties we include.
We compile the master with .ali and .h files.
What can we do to solve this problem?

[Alexander Halser]

Is the TOC of the child file merged into the master CHM? It's possible to merge the content of a child file only, but not the TOC. Topics would be available when addressed by a link, but the TOC will not change if the topic is not referenced by the TOC.

[Baum&Help]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I get the feeling I'm doing something wrong, because I don't understand the question. We include the child .chm-files as shown below, and add to the extended .hhp-settings .alias- and .h-files that include the context id mappings.
This procedure works for the third party files, i.e. the master TOC is opened where the child .chm is inserted, but it does not work for our own projects.
Please advise the best solution.

Regards,
André van den Boogert

orcbookmarks_clip0001.jpg

[Alexander Halser]

You merge a CHM - has that been created with Help+Manual or with another tool? If you have the H&M source of the child project, we recommend to reference the the H&M project file instead of the CHM.

To make TOC merging in CHMs work, Help+Manual must know exactly how the TOC file of the child CHM is named. The internal TOC file is a file with the extension ".hhc". When H&M creates a CHM, the internal HHC-file is always named after the output file. A CHM called "ORCAReleaseNotes.chm" will have an internal TOC called "ORCAReleaseNotes.hhc". When you include a CHM file for run-time merging, H&M assumes the same rule, it will silently reference a TOC file "ORCAReleaseNotes.hhc". If the TOC in the child CHM is named differently, however, it will fail.

[Baum&Help]

Hi,

Indeed, we included chm-files we generated with H&M. I don't understand the TOC mismatch, because all references to the .chm-filenames are the same.
Anyhow, we now want to incluce our own projects and merge them on compile time, which makes life easier. Thanks.
But for a proper understanding, it would be nice to know how the TOC name can be different if the filenames are the same.

André

[Tim Green]

But for a proper understanding, it would be nice to know how the TOC name can be different if the filenames are the same.

This won't happen with a CHM created from a project in Help & Manual unless you actually physically change the name of the CHM file in Windows Explorer after creating it. Otherwise Help & Manual will always match the internal file names to the name of the CHM output file.

[Baum&Help]

Hi,
Maybe that the names are matched case-sensitive?
André

[Tim Green]

Hi André,

Windows is generally not case-sensitive, but it's still good practice to behave as if it were, because it can sometimes cause problems. In the same way, even though Windows can officially handle file names that contain special characters and spaces, I would always strongly advise against using either spaces or special characters in any file names on any operating system. It's just asking for trouble, particularly with old programs like CHM, which Microsoft has not really updated since it was released with Windows 98. The CHM system as a whole is extremely allergic to spaces and special characters in file names -- CHM files should never have spaces in their names, for example -- and also to long paths and any kinds of special characters in paths. For example, if the path to a CHM contains a # character and some other characters, the compiler will always crash.