Chm Help filenames with dot not allowed?

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Horst Reichert
Posts: 77
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 12:54 pm

Chm Help filenames with dot not allowed?

Unread post by Horst Reichert »

I need to update a project for supporting my Delphi components for Embarcadero RAD Studio 8 and 10.
As these environments switched over from Microsoft VStudio Help to Web Help (chm) I need to alter my pages accordingly:
--------------------------------------------------------------------- from Embarcadero documentatio -------------------------------------------------------
You need to add the fully-qualified name as title. It is very important that the title included between the <Title></Title> HTML tags is the fully-qualified name that describes the content of such file, such as: <Title>UnitName.ClassName.MethodName</Title>.
Warning: The title included between the <Title></Title> HTML tags must be fully qualified, otherwise the help may not link to the right file when F1 is pressed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But as I see H&M7 does replace the dots used in the topic names with underscores. This results in a malfunction using <F1> to retrieve the correct information on my component properties.
How can I come around this problem?
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Tim Green
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Re: Chm Help filenames with dot not allowed?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Horst,

A CHM topic ID that contains special characters like dots, spaces and a number of other characters is invalid and simply will not work. That is one of the many restrictions of the ancient Microsoft CHM system. (Actually, Windows itself doesn't really support them either, but current versions do a lot of acrobatics to make it look as though it does.)

It is fine if the *title* that the user sees contains dots and any other characters. The only things you need to change are the topic IDs that the user does not normally see, which are used for actually accessing the topics (they are converted into the internal topic filenames inside the CHM, which is an archive format).

You can edit the topic IDs in the Topic Options tab (upper left of the editor window). All references to the topic within the project will be updated automatically when you do this. Any external references (context calls etc) must be updated externally, of course. You will probably need to export a new map file for your references after updating the topic IDs.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Horst Reichert
Posts: 77
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 12:54 pm

Re: Chm Help filenames with dot not allowed?

Unread post by Horst Reichert »

You can edit the topic IDs in the Topic Options tab (upper left of the editor window). All references to the topic within the project will be updated automatically when you do this.
That is what I already did! I was not mentioning the title but the TopicIDs (Embarcadero names them titles) which dots are converted by H&M7 to underscores.
This causes the Errors with Embarcadero Studio.
Any further hints?
Horst Reichert
Posts: 77
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 12:54 pm

Re: Chm Help filenames with dot not allowed?

Unread post by Horst Reichert »

OK I figured it out...
...I had to enter the fully qualified Name as Topic.
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