Folder (directory) assignment

[TomHenehan]

Maybe this is a bug, or maybe I'm just missing something that should be obvious. If it is a bug, it was recently introduced.

I haven't been working regularly in H&M for 6 or 8 weeks; I completed my first Help project, and have been waiting for more code to be completed before I can start my next (much larger) project.

The first project was exported to PDF and to Classic WinHelp. All the files created during these processes (the .pdf, the .hlp, etc.) were placed in the same folder as the .hm3 files from which they were generated; to wit:

R:\Henehan\HelpFiles

(The "R" drive is a network drive -- actually, a partition on one of our server's hard drives -- that individual employees use for ongoing work. Each of us has our own subdirectory [e.g., "Henehan," which is me] within which we each set up our own system of folders or sub-subdirectories.)

For the upcoming project, we want to use HTML Help. Today I recompiled the existing (earlier) .HM3 project as HTML as a test, just to verify that H&M would indeed generate a working HTML help file just as it did for WinHelp. I was surprised and disappointed to see that the new.chm file that was generated appeared, NOT in the same folder as the original .hm3 file and as the .hlp and .pdf generated earlier, but elsewhere -- one level "up." What I expected to find as:

R:\Henehan\HelpFiles\PickMasterHelp.chm

appeared instead as:

R:\Henehan\PickMasterHelp.chm.

CLUES: When I found this .chm file in the directory R:\Henehan, I also found four other similarly-named files generated from the same H&M project. Files named "PickMasterHelp.*" with the file extensions .cnt, .fts, .GID, and .hlp appear time-stamped 9/12/02, 8:2n AM in the "wrong" high-level directory. The exact same filenames also appear where I expected t ofind them, in R:\Henehan\HelpFiles, but with an earlier set of time stamps: 8/15/02 1:0n PM.

This leads me to believe that an H&M update installed between mid-August and mid-September (probably version 3.2) no longer places newly generated files in the same place that the earlier version did -- at least, not when the path is more than two levels "deep."

[Tim Green]

Tom:

It's actually quite simple, but easy to miss. When you hit compile you get a window showing an output path. These paths are remembered for each output type. If you don't check and just hit Enter to compile when choosing a new output type it's easy to have your fresh output end up somewhere unexpected; this is something that's happened to me a few times too.