Ambiguous Characters message

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vanwerkum
Posts: 192
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:34 pm

Ambiguous Characters message

Unread post by vanwerkum »

Refer the attachment.
What exactly does the "ambiguous characters" message mean?
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Tim Green
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Re: Ambiguous Characters message

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Van,
vanwerkum wrote:What exactly does the "ambiguous characters" message mean?
Well, first of all your filename contains more than one dot, which is always a bad idea in any case. To begin with it makes the filename ambiguous because Windows identifies file types by the dot followed by the extension. In addition to this many programs may even interpret this as a possible virus because that is how many virus programs hide themselves.

The real problem here, however, is a bug in the HTML Help compiler. The Microsoft programmers thought it would be clever to make the compiler identify HTML files with just a dot followed by h (i.e. .h) instead of looking for the entire extension (i.e. .htm or .html).

This solution was programmed at a time when more than one dot in a filename was still completely illegal, and back then it was OK. Now, however, Windows allows you to have multiple dots in filenames. If you do this and a dot is followed by an h the compiler will identify the file as HTML, no matter what kind of file it really is, and it will try to index it for full-text search and treat it as an HTML file. This will often make the compiler crash.

Solution: Never use more than one dot in filenames. If you must use more than one, for whatever reason, always make sure that none of the additional dots is followed by the letter h.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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vanwerkum
Posts: 192
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2005 4:34 pm

Unread post by vanwerkum »

Thanks Tim. A fount of knowledge as always ...
I'll drop the "." characters.
eugenem
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2010 4:10 am

Re: Ambiguous Characters message

Unread post by eugenem »

I am having trouble publishing to .CHM
I have been using H&M for over 12 months and my settings are stable. Infact, I comiled some 600 topic CHM files approx 1 week ago.
The only thing that I have changed (To my knowledge) is the 14/Sept/2011 MS patches and installing the Icanlocalise Translation assistant.
When I open the CHM, I get the "This program cannot display the webpage..." message.
PDF output is fine.

Anyway, I am now getting the following:
Compiler Messages

File name HMSkin_Black.hmskin contains ambiguous characters ".h". The HTML Help compiler will attempt to full-text index this file and treat it as HTML.
File name HMSkin_Blue.hmskin contains ambiguous characters ".h". The HTML Help compiler will attempt to full-text index this file and treat it as HTML.
File name HMSkin_Silver.hmskin contains ambiguous characters ".h". The HTML Help compiler will attempt to full-text index this file and treat it as HTML.
Help compiler started: C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop\hhc.exe

As per previous discussion, there have no additional full stops/periods in any of my folder and file names.

Anyideas what is going on and how it can be fixed?
I am going to remove the MS updates and then the Translation Assistance app.

EM
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