Updating to Premium Pack 2.50

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Tim,

I like the look of the new Premium Pack, especially the timed cache feature. I've downloaded and tried it as a test and it works fine.

My problem is that I'm using a very old version of Premium Pack 2 to which I have made lots of mods to the CSS and HTML templates, and changed the icons in the skin Baggage files. Including your "r2d2" script mod to force no caching.

How can I easily get the new functionality of Premium Pack 2.5 while retaining my existing skin appearance? I could simply copy all my old CSS files, HTML templates and baggage icons, but I'm worried that may break some of the new functionality. Using WinMerge on all the files could take all day.

I'm using only Webhelp.

Also, there seems to be a bug in the Premium Pack installer in that an unnecessary sub-folder is created with a duplicated name:

C:\Program Files (x86)\EC Software\HelpAndManual652\HelpAndManual652\Templates\HTML Skins\Premium Pack 2.50\

It works fine but is a bit confusing in finding the skins.

regards,

Martin.

[Tim Green]

Hi Martin,

It works fine but is a bit confusing in finding the skins.

That's one of the quirks of Innosetup (and many other installers) when you change the default installation location. They tend to create this duplicate if you're not careful about changing the path -- probably by conflating your selection and their memory of the last install or their planned install or something like that. It's not really a correctable bug (it didn't happen on any of my test installs so it's definitely not global), more something you need to check on before installing.

Using WinMerge on all the files could take all day.

I'm afraid that's your only real option on heavily modded skins. I've thought about this a lot but there's really no clean solution. The only possibility would be to make everything completely modular with checksums for all the modules or something like that, but even then the likelihood of nasty errors is still very high, and modifications within the modules would still bring the whole thing down like a house of cards.

General things to keep in mind:

• Drop ALL the old versions of JS files, and also the old R2D2 hack, which was only for Firefox anyway.
• Make sure that you get all the new variables and any new build options.
• When in doubt, leave the new code in rather than replacing it, merge in your changes one step at a time.

[Ola Timpson]

Hi Tim

Thank you for this information, I had been wondering the same thing as Martin and so it's good to know for when I get time to check out the new skins.

Kind regards,
Ola

[Martin Wynne]

Using WinMerge on all the files could take all day.

I'm afraid that's your only real option on heavily modded skins.

Hi Tim,

Have I got this right? To get at the files in the new PremiumPack2.50 skins:

1. copy the new .hmskin file from the H&M program folders to a new location somewhere.

2. rename it with a .zip extension.

3. extract the contents to a new empty folder.

4. rename the extracted project.hmxp file as project.hmskin

5. select this as the skin file in my project.

That all seems to work and matches my existing modified skin file structure, but I don't remember such a palaver to create it. Why can't we simply open an .hmskin file and save it in extended format the same way as an .hmxz file? I'm sure that was possible in an earlier version of H&M. Should I add this to the wish list?

The skins have to be in extended format with a separate Baggage Files folder in order to diff the files in WinMerge.

Unless I'm missing something?

regards,

Martin.

[Tim Green]

Hi Martin,

It was never possible to save skins uncompressed, no. However, you don't actually need to do this to diff and merge in WinMerge, although I would still recommend it. If you install the 7zip plugin and enable archive support in File > Options > Archive Support, WinMerge will happily treat .hmxz and .hmskin files as archives and diff and merge inside them. PowerGrep can also do the same thing, by the way -- you just need to tell it which extensions are really zips.

I always feel a little nervous about doing this kind of thing though. I prefer to have everything unpacked. After all, it only takes a single error to make the entire contents of a zip unusable...

[Tim Frost]

I always migrate to new skin versions using a method based on comparison and careful editing. I recommend it, both for security and certainty and also to educate yourself about what features have changed. But I use Beyond Compare, which can be told which extensions to open as ZIP format. No need to unpack anything.