XML tags in Headings disappear in Webhelp when loading the jstopics file

[markusflow]

Hello,

we have some XML tags in our headings:

screenshot1_withtags.png

When this chapter is called directly, the tags are shown as they should.
When switching to another chapter and back to this one (so the content is loaded dynamically from the corresponding jstopics file, the XML tags are gone.

screenshot2_withouttags.png

The escaping went wrong:

sourcecode.png

We use

H&M: 10.0.3 Build 77453
HMSKIN: Webhelp-Skin from: Premium Pack Version 4.3.0

I know that we are in charge of updating to a newer skin version. Can anyone tell me, if this solves the problem or is this a persisting issue?

Thanks, Markus

[Tim Green]

Hi Markus,

This is actually the skins working as designed. It's a limitation of how they work: When the user visits the site the FIRST page they visit becomes the main page. After that, when they browse the documentation, the contents of the topic DIV in the current page is replaced with the compressed JSON version of the new topic's content dynamically. This is massively faster than reloadin.g an entire topic page with all its assets -- generally 150-300ms instead of up to 2-3 seconds. The downside of this is that anything you want switched when a new topic is loaded has to be in the body of that topic coming from the project.

[markusflow]

Hi Tim,

that's totally fine and we love this feature of dynamic and fast loading.
But we want our chapter heading to appeare as is.

I think the problem is:

Code: Select all

<p class="topictitle">Select &lt;Metadata&gt;/&lt;Key list&gt; (DLG)</p>

is in the html file.
but the *.js files holds

Code: Select all

hmTitle:"Select <Metadata>\/<Key list> (DLG)",

This is why after loading the content from the js file, only "Select / (DLG)" is displayed.
The < and > must be escaped as well, or am I wrong?

[Tim Green]

Hi Markus,

Ah, sorry -- now I see what you actually mean. This is something that needs to be fixed in HM: It's not escaping the contents of the hmTitle: and hmTitlePath: properties in the JSON topic object in the JSFILES folder. I'll check with the developers on this and get back to you here.

[markusflow]

Thank you, Tim!

[Tim Green]

Hi Markus,

After a long discussion our developers have decided that for a variety of technical reasons, they would rather not escape these special characters in the jstopics files generated by HM. Note that the only actual problem is caused by the
<META>
format with no spaces after < and before >. If you write
< META >
instead, it will work fine.

I'm going to implement internal escaping for this in the upcoming version 6, but it won't be possible to backport this to older skins that are already out there. However, for your specific case I could patch the necessary scripts in your skin for you. Just mail me a download link to the skin at support AT ec-software.com (replace the AT with @). You can't send it as an email attachment because the mail servers now block anything with scripts in it, even in a zip.

[markusflow]

Thank you, Tim, I really appreciate your effort.

A switch to a new skin version is pending for a while now so I think I will wait for a new version an port the full template to this version.