Images from baggage files in library do not show up in CHM export

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Martin Krimmel
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Images from baggage files in library do not show up in CHM export

Unread post by Martin Krimmel »

Hi again,
We have been working hard on making our projects more efficient using libraries and template files for recurring content and consistent formatting. The idea was to keep the icons etc. required for any snippets from the library in the respective Baggage folder.

Everything seemed to work fine until we tried to create a sample CHM output.

The CHM output reports that some image files from the libraries baggage folder are missing and does not render them accordingly. Funnily enough, others from the same folder in the same library are found.

However, if I do the same thing in other output formats such as PDF, the images are found. The images are present in the respective library's Baggage folder.

The project and the library are both managed in SVN. Here the issue get's even weirder:

If the library and the project are opened on another machine after updating from SVN, the result is similar but not the same.
While on one machine only one image is missing in CHM, several others are missing when the same export is created on the remote machine.

The search folders and settings are apparently identical on the machines (as the should be since the projects are synched via SVN). What am I missing?
Thank you for any help.

Best regards
Martin
Martin Krimmel
Technical Writer/Translator
d.velop Life Sciences GmbH
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Tim Green
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Re: Images from baggage files in library do not show up in CHM export

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Martin,

When you say "library", I think you're translating the German word for the style repository (Bibliothek). 8)

The first point here is that your images shouldn't really be in the baggage folder at all. They should be in their own images folder(s), which should be included in the search path of the repository project. It will work in the baggage, but it is really not for images, but for small asset files for use in templates and so on.

How are the images being inserted from the repository? If they are in topics inserted as snippets from the repository then they should be found. If they are being inserted directly then the folder in the repository project must be included in the project search path in the project where they are being inserted. Also check that they have CHM-compatible names: No spaces, no non-alphanumeric characters, no accents, no umlauts, no ß etc. Just standard ASCII 0..9, a..z, A..Z, and _.

Also, what format are the images that are not being found? I.e. BMP, JPEG, PNG and so on. Some old BMP files cause problems in CHM.

Some character sequences can also cause problems in CHM. For example, if there is the sequence ".h" anywhere in a path, filename or pretty much anywhere else, the CHM compiler can crash or behave strangely.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Krimmel
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Dec 11, 2019 3:47 pm
Location: Germany
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Re: Images from baggage files in library do not show up in CHM export

Unread post by Martin Krimmel »

Hi again,

thanks for the info on the incorrect translation/terminology. I have not switched to the English UI which I should have done before trying to write a text about it. :oops:

Thanks also for the helpful info about baggage files and images.

I moved the images, updated the search paths and now it works. I had already come up with the search path extension myself in the meantime.

Sometimes the solution can be so simple once you know what you are looking for.

Thanks again
Martin
Martin Krimmel
Technical Writer/Translator
d.velop Life Sciences GmbH
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