Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

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DavidLink
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Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:15 am

Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

Unread post by DavidLink »

Hi guys,

I save my manual as an uncompressed xml manual, I then send the maps and topics folders to be translated.

The translators are having a problem with a few files.

They use SDL's Trados Studio 2014 to open the xml files for translation. Trados Studio reports that one file has nearly 250,000 words, therefore it takes a very long time to open the manual, open the file, save the file, then export the manual.

I noticed this topic has 7 or 8 images in it, and the xml file contains the raw image data. I think the translation software is seeing the raw image data as words.

Is there anything I can do from a help and manual perspective to mitigate this problem?

Trados Studio seems fairly good at handling html files etc, Is there a way I can work with these files instead of the xml files? The only reason I use the xml method is because it's how my predecessor did it.

Or has anybody used Trados Studios know of a fix from their end?
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DavidLink
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Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:15 am

Re: Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

Unread post by DavidLink »

I may have just solved this issue.

It appears these images are embedded.

I'll update this thread when I have a definite solution for legacy.
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Tim Green
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Re: Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi David,

As you have guessed, this will almost certainly be caused by embedded images. Just right-click on them and choose the option to export them to external files. Embedded images are created when you copy and paste images from programs like Word into the Help & Manual editor. They can be a serious cause of slow editing performance. A couple of embedded images are OK, but you need to know that they take up a huge amount of memory and computer resources (many times their own uncompressed size) and having more than a few of them can slow down editing and will also unnecessarily bloat your project files. Help & Manual as of version 6 automatically prompts the user to convert embedded images to external files on insertion and this prompt should be taken seriously.

You should definitely convert all embedded images to external files by right-clicking on them and selecting the convert option. You can identify embedded images by selecting them -- when selected, they do not turn "negative" in the same way as normal images. You can also locate embedded images by generating a full report with image references using the Report Tool in the Project tab, then search for the word "embedded" in the results. You can then jump to the topic in the project to convert the images by clicking on the live link to the topic (topic ID as a hyperlink) in the next column of the report.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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DavidLink
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:15 am

Re: Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

Unread post by DavidLink »

For prosperity, Tim is spot on.

I found that SDL Trados Studio 2014 was seeing the components of the embedded image as a word, the rigmarole of importing, attempting to translate etc over 250,000 words per file was slowing the whole process down by several orders of magnitude (10+ hours down to 5 minutes)

Thanks Tim!
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Tim Green
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Re: Images when manual is saved as .hmxP

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi David,

Thanks for the confirmation! 8)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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