Multiple WebHelp projects

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Multiple WebHelp projects

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Like all other output formats except CHM, WebHelp only supports publish-time merging. When you publish a project containing child modules to WebHelp all the child projects are always published to a single HTML directory with a single index file and Table of Contents (TOC).

However, sometimes you may still want to set up a larger WebHelp project with a modular structure, using a separate directory and index file for each module. When you do this the WebHelp help systems in the separate output directories are referred to as "collections".

Click to expand/collapseHow to set up a "modular" Webhelp project

To do this you must create and edit completely separate projects. Do not use a master-child structure. Your project modules must be independent of each other.

Publishing and uploading to your server:

When you publish your "modular" WebHelp projects each project must be published to a separate folder. In the same way, when you upload the projects to your server you must store them in separate folders. If you upload them all to the same folder you will probably overwrite some files, resulting in errors.
Click to expand/collapseRestrictions with "modular" Webhelp projects

There are some important restrictions and also some important points you need to observe when working with collections and the links between them.

•These are not real modular projects. You cannot insert the child modules in a master Help & Manual project. If you did this all the modules would automatically be integrated in a single output folder, which is not what you want here. Separate "modules" must be opened and published as separate projects.

•You can link between collections but you cannot merge their TOCs.

•You cannot create links to the target topics in the project files of the other projects because Help & Manual cannot manage links between collections across directory boundaries. You must use Internet links, inserting the correct URLs and/or paths between your planned directory locations yourself.
Click to expand/collapseCompiling projects to separate HTML directories

•Open each project and publish it separately, to a separate directory. A WebHelp project like this in its own directory is called a "collection".

•Make sure that you manually enter a different output directory for each project in the Index Page: field of the Publish dialog. It is good to check this to make absolutely sure that you are not publishing everything to the same directory.
Click to expand/collapseCreating links between Webhelp projects

Do not try to use normal topic links for hyperlinks between WebHelp projects output to separate directories. This will not work! Use Internet links (see below for syntax).

In the Target window: field of the Hyperlink dialog select:

Same as referring topic:

Opens the target topic in the current window. The TOC of the current collection will continue to be displayed. You will not see the TOC of the collection containing the target topic.

Top frame:

Opens the target topic in the current window with the TOC of the target collection. The TOC of the current collection will no longer be displayed.

New window:

Opens the target topic in a new window together with its own TOC. The current window remains open.
Click to expand/collapseSyntax for links between collections

The standard syntax for links between collections is as follows:

index.html?topic_id.htm#anchor

Use lower case:

The names and extensions of all the files generated for WebHelp are all lower case, even if the topic IDs used to generate the file names contain upper case characters (all file names are automatically "down-cased" when you publish). This is very important – if you use upper-case characters your links will fail on all Unix and Linux servers and many other systems!

index.html

This is the index file of the target project and it should always be included in the links. Even though linking directly to the topic file may seem to work the browser history may not be stored properly, making it impossible for the user to return to the original topic by using the browser's Back button.

By default the index file of WebHelp has the extension .html unless you enter a different extension in the Index Page: field of the Publish dialog.

?topic_id.htm

The ? character is necessary between the index file and the topic filename. Each topic is stored in a separate file and the file name is generated by converting all characters to lower case and adding .htm to the topic's topic ID. For example, if the topic ID is HM_Intro then the topic file name would be hm_intro.htm.

#anchor

This is optional and links to an anchor in the target topic.

See also:

WebHelp