Missing skin image files when using the CLI tool

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Andre.Greeff
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:18 pm
Location: South Africa

Missing skin image files when using the CLI tool

Unread post by Andre.Greeff »

Greetings,

So, my guide contains images and descriptions for three variations of one product, so I have conditional tags through the guide for "HEADCOUNT", "IDENTIPARK" and "TRAFFIC". My target output needs to be in both PDF (for download) and HTML (for bundling in a webapp), so instead of doing this rather long-winded process through the GUI, I figured three CLI commands would be way simpler. Thing is, I'm having some trouble with missing output files with the WebHelp output type.. Can't seem to find any obvious configuration issues here and everything appears to be really simple, so I'm very lost at the moment.

To use one of these output When I publish through the interface, I have the following options set (for clarity I'm not going to trim folder paths):
  • Format: WebHelp
  • Index page: D:\Software Manuals - H&M\Reporting Platform\HTML\Traffic\index.html
  • Select Skin: D:\Software Manuals - H&M\Common Files\Integrated IFrames with Header - Reporting Platform.hmskin
  • Include Options
    • WebHelp
    • TRAFFIC
The skin is a copy of the "Integrated IFrames with Header - Blue.hmskin" file with a few minor CSS tweaks, but nothing else. This method outputs correctly:
2015-05-15 15_54_17-Reporting Platform - User Guide.png
From what I found in the documentation, the following CLI command (run from within my project folder) should yield the same output results as that set above:

Code: Select all

HELPMAN.EXE "Reporting Platform - User Guide.hmxz" /HTML="HTML\Traffic2\index.html" /O="D:\Software Manuals - H&M\Common Files\Integrated IFrames with Header - Reporting Platform.hmskin" /I=TRAFFIC
Note: This was deliberately set to different output folder for a side-by-side comparison.

When running this, I get the following command line output:

Code: Select all

Help & Manual command line compiler version 6.5.5 build 3019
Compiling Reporting Platform - User Guide.hmxz
[Info] Preparing topics
[Info] Preparing table of contents
[Info] Preparing project files
[Info] Preparing merged projects
[Info] Generating Webhelp
[Info] Writing topics
[Info] Compilation complete
Viewing this page in my browser looks horrible though:
2015-05-15 15_54_59-Reporting Platform - User Guide.png
Doing a comparison of the folders shows 10 files missing from the CLI output folder (Beyond Compare, showing only orphaned files):
2015-05-15 15_57_16-Traffic _--_ Traffic2 [Beyond Compare].png
What on earth am I doing wrong here..?
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Tim Green
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Location: Bruehl, Germany
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Re: Missing skin image files when using the CLI tool

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Andre,

One thing you should definitely do is eliminate all the spaces in your project names. Help & Manual 6 still bases the names of a number of crucial WebHelp HTML files on the project name, and although it eliminates the spaces the discrepancy in the names can still cause problems sometimes. Also, having spaces in the project name makes it impossible for the project name and the names of CHM files to be the same (spaces are not allowed in CHM file names), and this causes problems in modular projects, where the links to topics in other modules via the projects only work when the project names and the output CHM file names are identical.

I would also always avoid using special characters like "&" anywhere in paths in Windows. The CHM compiler is more likely to choke on that than WebHelp output, but it is still best to avoid it generally as a good practice.

Also, always include the output format as the first include option. So your /I switch should be /I=HTML,TRAFFIC.

Check whether it improves after you make all those corrections. If not, please mail me a small demo project and a copy of your skin to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we'll test it out here. 8)
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.
User avatar
Andre.Greeff
Posts: 101
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:18 pm
Location: South Africa

Re: Missing skin image files when using the CLI tool

Unread post by Andre.Greeff »

Thanks for the suggestions Tim. Unfortunately I don't have much time at the moment to restructure my documentation folder, but you do raise some very valid points with my folder/file naming scheme. I tend to rely on end-user-friendly names a bit too much sometimes, even when I don't need to. Whether this causes problems or not, I actually do need to clean up and simplify my project names..

After reading your reply I double-checked the CLI Syntax page and realised what I did wrong; I missed the note about always including the build output in the "/I=..." switch. Did a quick test now and simply adding that sorted out the output files. Makes sense when you consider it's effectively the same as selecting the options through the GUI, which also ticks the "include" for the currently selected output.

So, I now have one batch file to create 3 user guides in 2 formats each.. Gotta love it. :)
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