Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

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Tim Green
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Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

We have just released both Help & Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2. These are major updates with a lot of new features and improvements.

Blog posting for the Help+Manual 7.2 update:

Help & Manual 7.2 Information

Change log page for the Premium Pack 3.2 update:

Premium Pack 3.20 Information

Getting the Updates :

You can get the Help & Manual installer from the normal download page here. Just install on top of your current version to update. This will not change any of your settings etc.

You can download and install the updated version of the Premium Pack with the download link and installation password from the mail you received when you purchased your copy of Premium Pack 3. If you no longer have this please contact support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and we will help you out.

Help & Manual 7.2 Highlights:
  • Separate viewer and books for the EWriter format
  • Numerous improvements and new features in EWriter
  • Support for IPP cover images with variables in ePub and Kindle
  • Support for OpenOffice 4 spell checker dictionaries
  • Replace images with copy/paste in the HM editor
  • Improved multiple monitor support
  • Normal style now has a dedicated class name in HTML output
  • Checks for duplicate IDs in HTML-based output
  • HMXZ projects can now be edited in Dropbox folders
  • Export and import Keyword Index as XML for editing and translation
Premium Pack 3.20 Highlights:
  • WordPress plugin with intuitive configuration settings
  • Support for Google Web Fonts
  • Advanced support for developers (persistent session variables, code to execute automatically on page loads)
  • SmartCache reduces bandwidth use in V3 responsive skins
  • Improved handling of topics with multiple TOC entries
  • Improved handling of single-topic "chapters"
  • Link to specific instances of multiple TOC entries with URLs
  • New ways of displaying images and tables on mobile devices
  • Define the keyword index to expand automatically in desktop browsers
  • Flash component eliminated in all skins
  • Automatic page reload after sleep on mobile devices
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Suzette Seveny
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Suzette Seveny »

I took one of the skins from PP 3 and heavily customized it. With a new premium pack released, do I have to start all over again or is there something I can do with my customized skin?
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Suzette Leeming wrote:I took one of the skins from PP 3 and heavily customized it. With a new premium pack released, do I have to start all over again or is there something I can do with my customized skin?
If you customized the code then you would have to start again. The only way around that would be to unpack all the contents of your customized skin and the corresponding new one into two folders (change the .hmskin extension to .zip and unpack it) and then use a compare and merge program like the free WinMerge to merge your differences into the new code. You have to be incredibly careful when you do that, however and it's easy to make mistakes. But if you've made major changes it can be worth a try.

I would wait a little, however, because some corrections and one new feature will be coming shortly. (Some users have asked for the option to use the formatted header from the topic editor in the V3 Responsive skins header.)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Suzette Seveny
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Suzette Seveny »

As soon as I read "you have to be incredibly careful" I gave up. I struggled to customize the skin I'm using. It's not perfect but it's the best I can do for now. I don't even have the mobile devices set up right (tablets/phones) because I was more concerned about having it display in other browsers as a start.

I'm not a web developer. I write content. All this other stuff just gives me ulcers. I had our web guy look at the premium pack skins to see if he could help me and he not only gave up, he said he had a lot more respect for what I did. It's not even a year since I went through that pain and I'm not doing it again. I tried to find an "expert" that we could hire on contract to do it, but with no luck.

The offer of a contract for an expert at designing these skins for me is still open. Or leads to a training course.

I guess that was a stupid question but thanks for the response.
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Suzette,

If you mail me your customized skin I could see if it's possible to merge the new version into it without too much trouble. Just mail it to support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @) and I'll check it out for you. :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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VincentBevort
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by VincentBevort »

After upgrading to 7.2 i get the following message:

Your project "C:\Users\.....User Guide.hmxp" is under SVN version control. The newer Tortoise SVN client installed on your system requires the additional installation of the Collabnet SVN command line client. This Collabnet client must have the same version number as your version of Tortoise for Help+Manual to be able to interact with the SVN system correctly.

It mentions "The newer Tortoise SVC Client installed on my system..." . I did NOT install anything else than your upgrade. I had the 1.9.2 version installed and that is the same version that i found after upgrading to 7.2.
It also mentions "This Collabnet client must have the same version number as your version of Tortoise". I never had anything called Collabnet installed.

I now upgraded my server to VisualSVNServer 3.5.6 and my local installation to TortoiseSVN 1.9.4 but still get this message.
This combination with older versions worked on the 7.1 release.

What's this Collabnet client for a thing? Do I have to have some additional software next to the ones mentioned to get my version control back?
How do I get the SVN up and running again?
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Vincent,

Sorry about this: The problem is that Tortoise recently removed the DLL needed for 32-bit applications to communication with SVN directly from their 64-bit package and no longer provides any functional 32-bit DLL that will work with that package. This is now only provided by Collabnet. You only need the very small 32-bit command line client from Collabnet for this. See this blog post for full instructions:

http://news.helpandmanual.com/2016/08/r ... toise-svn/

We made the cutoff point in the new version 1.9.2 because there were also problems with this version on some systems. However, this may have been over-cautious because quite a few people can use this without problems. We are discussing whether we can raise the cutoff to 1.9.3 instead so that users who are not having problems with 1.9.2 can stay with it if they want.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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VincentBevort
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by VincentBevort »

Thanks Tim,

Works like a dream now. :D
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Flowbird group
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Re: Help+Manual 7.2 and Premium Pack 3.2 Released

Unread post by Tim Green »

Update on the 1.9.2/1.9.1 cutoff issue: In all our tests, 1.9.2 does not work out of the box on all current versions of Windows that have been fully updated. So we are forced to leave the cutoff point at 1.9.1. Anyone who does not absolutely need to update to 1.9.5 (the current version) and add the Collabnet client can instead downgrade Tortoise to 1.9.1, which works fine with Help+Manual. You can get older versions of Tortoise here on SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tortoisesvn/files/
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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