Converting HPJ --> HTML-HELP : DLLs not found

[Phillip]

When trying to convert a "normal" help project to a HTML help project, the
Workshop launches an error message: "DLLs for converting RTF to HTML not
found. Please reinstall MS Workshop" (or something like that, I translated
the message into English). Does anybody know *which* dlls (it doesn't say
that), and where to obtain them? From the Office CD maybe?

Thanks!

Workshop: Version 4.74.8702.0
OS: German, Win95

[David Liske]

Paul O'Rear's HTML Help DLL Registrar should take care of this problem. It's
available on his site at http://www.helpfulsolutions.com/.

David Liske
Microsoft HTML Help MVP 1999, 2000
http://mvps.org/htmlhelpcenter/

** With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea.

Phillip <Phillip...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8F256506DPhi...@195.34.133.35...

[Phillip]

webm...@htmlhelpcenter.hypermart.net (David Liske) wrote in
<uPT6CQcs$GA.280@cppssbbsa05>:

>Paul O'Rear's HTML Help DLL Registrar should take care of this problem.
>It's available on his site at http://www.helpfulsolutions.com/.

Thank you very much for the tip. It really *should* do the job, but
unfortunately it doesn't :-(. "DLL Registrar" congratulates me ;-) and says
that all the DLLs have been registered successfully, but then the same
error message appears.

Maybe I should contact the author Paul O'Rear himself...
But thanks again,

Phillip

[Paul A. O'Rear]

For anyone reading, Phillip and I have interacted somewhat and I've
determined so far that there is a bug in the convertor that doesn't handle
RTF output from some help authoring tools apparently. I'm still trying to
determine what the offending RTF token (or lack of a token) is so MS might
be able to fix it. I'll publish more as it comes to light.

Phillip's Help Authoring Tool for WinHelp was Windows Help Designer which is
not a Word-based HAT. The easiest fix to the problem at the moment is to
simply open the source .rtf files in Word, perform some minor change like
adding a space then deleting it, and then resaving as .rtf. Word will then
write out the .rtf in its own format and the convertor will work nicely.

I have a feeling that this may be more the source of the DLLs not
found/registered error message than the DLLs not actually having been found
or registered... :)

If it's an easy enough fix, I'll attempt a source file fixer as well based
off the files listed in an .hpj.

Paul
_________________________________________________
Paul A. O'Rear Ph: 717.502.1906
WUGNET Sysop & Microsoft MVP
Helpful Solutions
http://www.helpfulsolutions.com
mailto:p...@helpfulsolutions.com

"Phillip" <Phillip...@hotmail.com> wrote in message

news:8F2581104Phi...@195.34.133.35...

[Paul A. O'Rear]

Found the offending token in Phillip's case - \* just before \footnote in
the source rtf files. The \* token is used to indicate ignorable content
depending on the RTF reader. From the RTF 1.5 specification:

"Destinations added after the RTF Specification published in the March 1987
Microsoft Systems Journal may be preceded by the control symbol \*. This
control symbol identifies destinations whose related text should be ignored
if the RTF reader does not recognize the destination. (RTF writers should
follow the convention of using this control symbol when adding new
destinations or groups.) Destinations whose related text should be inserted
into the document even if the RTF reader does not recognize the destination
should not use \*. All destinations that were not included in the March 1987
revision of the RTF Specification are shown with \* as part of the control
word."

In any case, it would appear the RTF reader that's being used for the
conversion is treating \* when combined with \footnote as ignorable content,
and with the particular intent of this convertor, is not finding any topics
in the help .rtf content! (Since topics are designated by the #{\footnote
...} sequence. The simple solution is to replace "\*\footnote" with
"\footnote" in the source documents. A solution is on the way...

Paul
_________________________________________________
Paul A. O'Rear Ph: 717.502.1906
WUGNET Sysop & Microsoft MVP
Helpful Solutions
http://www.helpfulsolutions.com
mailto:p...@helpfulsolutions.com

"Paul A. O'Rear" <p...@helpfulsolutions.com> wrote in message
news:uKXoXV3s$GA....@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com...

[Phillip]

Many thanks Paul... :)

[Paul A. O'Rear]

The solution is a little applet now available on my site. Here's a blurb
describing it:

HLP to HTML Help Convertor Fixer - Despite the problems that HTML Help DLL
Registrar attempted to fix (various DLL components of the HTML Help Workshop
not being registered properly) it now appears that the infamous message that
frequently gets displayed - "The DLLs necessary to convert RTF to HTML have
not been installed correctly. Reinstall HTML Help Workshop and try again."
is somewhat bogus. Despite DLLs being registered correctly, the convertor
DLLs will bring up this message whenever they come up against something they
don't understand in the source files. One such thing that was discovered
recently is the usage of an RTF token (\*) that indicates non-essential text
to an RTF reader. One non-Word based Help Authoring Tool (HAT) emitted RTF
that used this token along with the \footnote token which is absolutely
essential for WinHelp source files, but the convertor inadvertently appeared
to ignore the \footnote token when preceded by the \* token. In any case,
this little applet scans a WinHelp project file (.hpj) for a project's RTF
files, backs up the RTF files, and then fixes the RTF source files by simply
deleting the \* token when used in coordination with the \footnote token.

Paul
_________________________________________________
Paul A. O'Rear Ph: 717.502.1906
WUGNET Sysop & Microsoft MVP
Helpful Solutions
http://www.helpfulsolutions.com
mailto:p...@helpfulsolutions.com

"Paul A. O'Rear" <p...@helpfulsolutions.com> wrote in message

news:uGWNGU4s$GA....@cppssbbsa02.microsoft.com...