Call WebHelp Topics from Database

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Tom Hickman
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Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2014 10:22 pm

Call WebHelp Topics from Database

Unread post by Tom Hickman »

We have a suite of Windows applications that are developed in the US but used in Europe. From one of the administrative modules the user is able to translate the English labels, headers, grids, etc. to display in their language (user-specific via login credentials). We would like to employ the same strategy with our help system. We currently have .chm help files that were originally created with Robo HTML but we do not have the project files. My plan was to import the .chm files into H&M, convert them to WebHelp and use them for context-sensitive help to be called from each individual application form, in addition to a centralized help form with a TOC. We currently have H&M v 4.5 but are looking to upgrade if the new version can accommodate our needs. My question is, assuming we are able to import the .chm topics and convert them to WebHelp using H&M, can the topic files we distribute be called from a database rather than a directory, so that we can make them available to our users (via the admin module as I described above) for translation? Our modules always have the ability to run in English or a local language. Both languages are in English until the user provides translations in the local language or languages (user-specific via login credentials). Assuming this was possible, we would then have our application point to the translated local language when it's available. Otherwise, we would have to export the topics into XML files, have them translated by the user, have the user send the translated topics back to us, import them back into the project, and then provide the updated sibling copy back to the user. This seems to be more work than it's worth.
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Tim Green
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Location: Bruehl, Germany
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Re: Call WebHelp Topics from Database

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Tom,

You can definitely import CHM with Help & Manual and you will get the correct structure in your project. How much formatting and editing you will have to do after importing depends on how the original was formatted, and in the case of RoboHelp CHMs, how much Kadov there is in it ("Kadov" is RH's infamous use of non-standard HTML elements that they invented themselves in their output).

WebHelp can't be served from a database, however. To do that you would need server-side XML-to-HTML rendering capabilities, because it only makes sense to store strictly-defined XML in a database. HTML is so error-tolerant and loosely defined that you can't access it reliably in a DB with structured queries like SQL or Linq. This is something we are looking into for future iterations but it will be a very major project.

As I understand it, however, your primary objective is to have different versions of your help available for different languages. You don't really need the database solution for that: Help & Manual 6 projects are 100% plain-text XML, which can be processed directly by SDL Trados and other modern translation and localization tools. This include the online ICanLocalize platform, which includes free translation memory software that is specifically optimized for Help & Manual XML projects. Once you have your translated versions you just create multiple WebHelp folders on your server, one for each language version, and direct your users to the appropriate versions.

Updating the different language versions is also easy if you are using translation memory tools like Trados or ICL: You just send the updated version of the original project to the translator and the memory software automatically replaces all unchanged text with the original translation. What is left over is the new and altered text, and that is all that the human translator then needs to work on.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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