Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Please post all questions and comments regarding Help & Manual 7 here.

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
chfrmeyer
Posts: 63
Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:07 pm

Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Unread post by chfrmeyer »

The transition from Version 6.x to 7.x of Help&Manual included the following two lines being added to the default html page template:

<meta name="description" content="<%TOPIC_DESCRIPTION%>" />
<meta name="picture" content="<%TOPIC_PICTURE%>" />

Just these days the first of these two lines seems to make the difference whether one of my (very complex and extensive!) Help&Manual projects publishes HTML (CHM) help or not. There is no easily understood reason why that project and not other ones should stumble over the problem, but that happens to be the way it is. When the HTML compilation problem occurs, the resulting file is overblown (say, twice the size it should be, or 1.5 MB) and cannot be opened.

It seems that I can work around that problem by simply eliminating the "description" line. I have so far never entered descriptions in my Help&Manual (XML) topics, and I understand and observe that in that case the "description" in html is assigned the first soandsomany (277?) characters of the topic text.
If I did eliminate the "description" line, which would "spare" the html files that item of meta data, what undesired ramifications could that have?

I'm also considering keeping that line but replacing the TOPIC_DESCRIPTION variable with TOPIC_TITLE_TEXT or TOPICID.

I'ld welcome anything that you may suggest. Due to the extensiveness and complexity of my projects, I feel at a loss to give you somethind to test with.

Regards
Christoph (chfrmeyer)
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Christoph,

This sounds a little strange. It would certainly not be a problem to replace the description variable with TOPIC_TITLE_TEXT or even eliminate the description tag entirely for CHM, because it doesn't really server any useful purpose there.

However, it is very strange that this should increase the size of the CHM like that. My guess is that something else is happening -- possibly it is happening in topics where the description contains characters that cause problems for the Microsoft CHM system. Those should be filtered and/or escaped by Help+Manual, but it is theoretically possible.

It would be helpful if you could mail me a small demo project illustrating the problem and the skin you are using to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) so that we can check it out directly.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
chfrmeyer
Posts: 63
Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:07 pm

Re: Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Unread post by chfrmeyer »

Hi Tim,

It took some effort for me to make a not-so-small "demo" Version of my Project featuring the Problem that I reported. I have just send a zip file to your Support Email address as you suggested.

To quote from the text in my Email message:

"What I did is copy the project to a different location on my local disk and rearrange things to have it self-contained insteat of referring to paths located outside of the project that are used by other projects.

In this state I can savely reproduce the problem of an overblown output chm file that cannot open.
Furthermore, there are two ways (workarounds, I'ld say) in which I can avoid the error:

1.
Eliminate the "description" line in one of my two page templates (or both, but one is enough for the purpose)

2.
Deactivate one of my XML source files so that it isn't included when publishing.
(I've tried that with a few source files, and it doesn't seem to matter which one is my victim).

This little detail makes all the difference whether the potüut file is of normal size (~800 kB) and can open, or whether it gets overblown (or undercompressed) at 1.5 MB and is unable to open. Maybe compression feature of the Microsoft HTML help Compiler gets knocked out at some point."


Thanks for your effort, and I hope you find something!

Christoph
chfrmeyer
Posts: 63
Joined: Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:07 pm

Re: Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Unread post by chfrmeyer »

Hi, Tim

my thanks to you and Alexander for your Support!

I nowe understand that there is that stupid Bug in the Microsoft HTML Help Compiler that very rarely (but unpredictably) makes itself noticed, and then I simply have to work around it. For which there are several ways, such as converting Bitmaps to gif rather than png, or suppressing or eliminating an XML source file (I eliminated a Zombie one and that also helped.).

To get back to the lines in the HTML page template for the description tag and the Picture tag:

They did not (by default) exist in earlier versions, and you said that the description tag serves no useful purpose in an CHM Output. How about the Picture tag?
And: For what Publishing output do These tags serve a useful purpose? Up to now I've only published as chm and PDF and am considering eliminating these two tag lines from my page templates.

Meaning the following ones:
<meta name="description" content="<%TOPIC_DESCRIPTION%>" />
<meta name="picture" content="<%TOPIC_PICTURE%>" />
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Re: Strange CHM size problem and page template detail

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Christoph,

Those tags are used for the featured images feature, which allows you to have a special image at the top of a topic (generally a main chapter):

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... images.htm

This is directly supported in some CHM skins and in the Premium Pack WebHelp templates. So if you want to use it, don't delete those tags... :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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