Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

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Tim Green
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Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Maintenance update 6.0.3 Build 2401 has now been released with a large number of improvements, fixes and fine tuning. All HM6 users should install this update right away, it is available on the downloads page:

http://www.ec-software.com/downloads.html

Change Log
  • Parsing bug with variables in exports tasks fixed: In some cases using export tasks could delete project variables.
  • Repositories dialog updated with new functionality and improved texts. Repositories can now be linked to projects directly in the repository manager dialog. This option has been removed from the "Miscellaneous" section of Configuration. The help has been updated to reflect the changes.
  • Webhelp: navigation script problem in IE9 fixed
  • PDF: Download link for Adobe Reader changed to language-neutral page: http://get.adobe.com/reader/
  • Configuration, topic status: modification of status text and color has been made more intuitive.
  • Small bug in HMX (version 4) project converter fixed: custom topic status with German umlauts in the description were not converted
  • CHM export: on a Chinese locale, keywords that contained hyphens and spaces resulted in a garbage keyword index. We are internally replacing spaces in keywords with hyphens as " " to work around a CHM keyword index sorting bug. The solution works fairly well in English environments, but fails on a Chinese locale, even with English projects.
  • CHM import: parsing error with unclosed HTML tags in CHM TOC fixed
  • Webhelp standard skins: autoscrolling problem in IE9 fixed, when the option for the keyword index as list was on
  • Cosmetic issue in image hotspot editor: ellipse-shaped hotspots are not supported in HTML (but were supported in Winhelp files), the corresponding hotspot option has been changed to circles.
  • Webhelp, image toggles: the "collapse all" function did not work with inline image toggles.
  • Webhelp, toggles in combination with full-text search: the full-text highlight function prevented the "expand all" toggle function from working.
  • New function in topic init script: HMAnyToggleOpen(): This function is designed to be used for a combined button to open/close all toggles on a page. The logic takes the current state of the toggles into account (even if opened manually) and closes them, if any toggle is open and opens them if not.
    Example: <a href="javascript:HMToggleExpandAll(!HMAnyToggleOpen())">
  • New editor option configuration option to activate/deactivate active style preview in the style selector tool. The option applies when selecting text style, font face or font size.
  • Welcome screen, news feed: optical glitch fixed with long news feed headings
  • Table sorting error fixed (occured when the first item in a table cell was an anchor)
  • Error in graphics padding settings: When the right value was zero (e.g. 20 0 0 10) it was not saved correctly
  • HTML export: duplicate HTML IDs within a topic are checked and warned about
  • HTML export: when an image had a picture ID and a caption, the ID was incorrectly associated with the <div> tag around the image
  • EPUB: When ISBN and URI was both used, the internal naming for the ISBN was incorrect
  • EPUB: "Book ID" validation now automatically strips invalid XML name characters
  • EPUB: Old iPad bugfix workaround for inline images in table cells removed (Apple fixed this bug with the iBooks 2.0 update and leaving the workaround in could cause problems on other platforms)
  • TOC glitch when changing from XML view
  • Manual designer now automatically opens with the manual template last used by the active project
  • Improved HelpScribble import
  • HTML export: Hanging paragraphs that start with a tab stop are now exported as indented text (before, we only treated paragraphs this way that had some text before the tab, e.g. like a tabbed list)
  • Toggle dialog: Text toggles now remembers the style setting of the previously inserted toggle
  • Webhelp export: template conversion problem occurring on Chinese Windows fixed
  • Tables: changes made to individual cells were not reversed by the undo function
  • Baggage files are now displayed sorted alphabetically
  • Menu item disabled that allowed inserting a new folder below a topic project file
  • Publishing process: Internal checks added to prevent a "not responding" message in the progress dialog when exporting abnormally long topics.
  • Automatic hyphenation in PDF export did not work on single words in tables
  • Insert table dropdown gallery in ribbon did not keep its 10 x 10 grid when the menu entry below had a long shortcut name
  • Topic status, color selection: Selecting an invalid custom color could cause an access violation
  • Changes to the compile tasks dialog
  • Minor changes to German UI texts
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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bruno.stivicevic
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by bruno.stivicevic »

Thaaaaaaanks!!!

Regards
Bruno
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Aitch
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Aitch »

Thank you so much Tim & Team

Fabulous as always
Version 9.0.3 Build 6380

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Always check your spellar and gramming before you publish!
JonJ
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by JonJ »

"HTML export: duplicate HTML IDs within a topic are checked and warned about"

I have just publioshed an existing help file as a chm and received an huge list of warnings "Duplicate HTML ID "PIC" in topic xyz
It seems that most, but not all the images have the ID "PIC" in them.
I'm not sure if this came from an earlier version of H&M, but we didn't specifically add the ID to the image properties.

Is there an easy way to fix this issue or turn off the warnings?
Also, the new Publish is a LOT slower than before, has anyone else noticed this?
Jon
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Tim Green
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

These warnings are for information only and are only really relevant if you are also planning to output to ePub. This is because ePub files will only validate correctly if there are no duplicate IDs within the entire project, not just in a single topic file (which would be the case for all other HTML formats). There is not currently an option to turn these warnings off, but I'm passing the request on to the developers. :)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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David Makulec
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by David Makulec »

Jon --

FWIW: So far, my subjective sense is that my projects publish to CHM, WebHelp, and PDF somewhat faster under 6.x than under version 5.x.

I have no timings from before, so I can't offer "objective" comparisons. (I felt it was already pretty darn fast under 5.x.)

But I definitely haven't felt it was any slower. (OTOH, I'm not getting hundreds of warnings.)
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Tim Green
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Update: These duplicate ID messages will be brought under control in the next update. :)

They are really not relevant for normal web browsers because none of them will actually do anything negative if you have duplicate IDs, even in a single topic. For CSS purposes they will treat them in exactly the same way as classes. You will only have problems if you try to manipulate them with scripts, because JS functions will expect IDs to be unique within a topic, but that's a completely different issue.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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JonJ
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by JonJ »

Tim

1.Thanks for the update on the warnings.

2. In my original post, I asked if it was possible to fix the ID's quickly, and that was prompted by a post I read where someone wanted to update all occurences of a web link in the XML. As this Image ID is in the XML, a similar solution (if available) would allow me to remove the ID from all the XML in one process. Is it possible to use Find/Replace on the XML Source, all topics?

3. My gut feeling about build time was a bit hasty. I decided to do the right thing and time the two. The project I am on now built in v6.0.3 in 17 minutes. I did the same project in v5 and it took 16 minutes - no biggy there. Perhaps it was the illusion of seeing all those warnings that made it appear slower.
Jon
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Tim Green
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Jon,
Is it possible to use Find/Replace on the XML Source, all topics?
Yes, that's one of the main reasons for the use of XML as the source code. You just need to save your project in HMXP format (Pro version required), then you can use a multi-file search and replace tool on all the topic files in the /Topics folder. To see what you need to search for and replace you can create before/after examples in the HM editor and then look at the source in the XML Source tab below the main editor window.

There are quite a few good tools you can use for this. Here are just three examples: Notepad++ is free and does regex search and replace on multiple files, but you don't get any previews so you have to be very careful and it uses an odd and rather limited version of regex, which can drive you crazy if you're used to a normal regex engine. FAR HTML is a good choice if you don't feel comfortable with regex: It can do complex multi-file search and replace with a simplified interface that is a lot easier to learn than regex, and it is also a useful toolbox with lots of additional functions for help authors. If you do feel comfortable with regex and are willing to pay a little more the best tool around is PowerGREP. If there's any kind of grepping task it can't handle well I haven't found it yet, and it can also do multi-file search and replace on the files inside .hmxz and .hmskin projects -- you just need to tell it that they are zip archives.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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hans akkerboom
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HTML export: duplicate HTML IDs within a topic are checked

Unread post by hans akkerboom »

As from Maintenance Update 6.0.3 warning "Duplicate HTML ID in topic" is shown while publishing my HTML help files.
In my case these warnings are caused by topics with two tables in them with each the same Background Picture.
How to avoid these warnings? Using a (Background) Picture twice within a topic is common practice, isn't it?
A search/replace as suggested in this forum shouldn't be necessary for my tiny (warning causing) 2-tables topic example :

<topic template="Default" lasteditedby="HAK">
<body>
<para styleclass="Normal"><table styleclass="Default" rowcount="1" colcount="2" style="background-color:none; background-image:url('abcdef987654.bmp');">
<tr style="vertical-align:top">
<td>
</td>
<td>
<para styleclass="Normal"><text styleclass="Normal" translate="true">AA</text></para>
</td>
</tr>
</table></para>
<para styleclass="Normal"><table styleclass="Default" rowcount="1" colcount="2" style="background-color:none; background-image:url('abcdef987654.bmp');">
<tr style="vertical-align:top">
<td>
</td>
<td>
<para styleclass="Normal"><text styleclass="Normal" translate="true">QQQ</text></para>
</td>
</tr>
</table></para>
</body>
</topic>

Any hints?
Thanks in advance,
HansA
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Tim Green
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Hansa,

You're update is just out of date. Download and install version 6.1 and you won't have the problem: 8)

http://www.helpandmanual.com/downloads.html
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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hans akkerboom
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by hans akkerboom »

Great! 'Problem' is solved.
Where do I find the 6.1 - 2504 release notes?

Regards,
HansA
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John Waller
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by John Waller »

Did you go to the link next to the Download button?
http://news.helpandmanual.com/2012/06/h ... ut-search/
Regards

John Waller
v.6.2.2 Build 2636
hans akkerboom
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Re: Maintenance Update 6.0.3 Released

Unread post by hans akkerboom »

Thanks John,

I found the notes.
A hidden feature i'd say.

Regards
HansA
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