[mzwecker]

I've also run into this problem. Similarly, my pdf generates when I clear all values from the ditaval (that is, I don't use any conditions).  As soon as I use any conditions, I get the error mentioned above.  I'm having trouble tracking down the source of the problem.

NEWS FLASH
Problem solved. I had a condition set on a choicetable element.
I guess that's a no-no.

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[mzwecker]

For what it's worth, we had to do a lot of work (customization) to make webhelp into something we could use.
Examples:
https://secure.join.me/welcome/webhelp/joinme/join.me/jm_faq_header_top10.html
https://secure.logmein.com/welcome/webhelp/LogMeInGetStart/LogMeIn/c_common_easy.html
https://secure.logmein.com/welcome/webhelp/pro/LogMeIn/c_lmi_fundamentals.html

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[mzwecker]

I use a tool called GrepWin.
I sometimes use it, for example, to set xml:lang attributes en masse.
http://code.google.com/p/grepwin/

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[mzwecker]

We've traced this back to topics with an empty tag.

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[mzwecker]

Wanda,
I've had great success using the XLIFF format for translation.  It will make your life easy.  Contact me if you want more details, but first download Swordfish II and give it a try.  It really is a great solution for localizing entire ditamaps.

http://www.maxprograms.com/downloads/

Regards,
Michael

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[mzwecker]

We've gone ahead and deactivated the native search and are in the process of finalizing an implementation of ZoomSearch  – http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/

Once it's working 100% I'll try to share details, or contact me if you are curious.

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[mzwecker]

The developer who created the Ancestor plugin gave me some help.

He sorted out that XMetaL users running OT 1.4.2 need to use version 1.1.1 of his plugin.

He (Marcus) really went out of his way, so I owe him a public THANKS!

http://bitbucket.org/qwcode/dita.ot.plugins.ancestors/downloads/

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[mzwecker]

gcrews,
Would you perhaps be willing to share your breadcrumb solution?
mzwecker at logmein.com

We're very close to a decent WebHelp solution based on the XMetaL WebHelp output, but I'd really need breadcrumbs to make the solution user-friendly.

I'd be very grateful if you'd be at liberty to share your solution.

Cheers,
Michael

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[mzwecker]

I finally found some time to play with this, and the problem seems to have been a simple one.

I did not have a proper zh_TW vars file in ..SoftQuadXMetaL SharedDITA_OTdemoxmfocfgcommonvars

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[mzwecker]

Just yesterday I made my first Chinese pdf3 outputs due to a new customer requirement.
My simplified Chinese came out fine, but my Traditional came out without the TOC and Index text. 

I have not had time to investigate, but I'll be following this thread and will post anything that I learn once I have time to investigate.

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[mzwecker]

I just wanted to report that the Flare DITA import does not currently support nested ditamaps, which renders it pretty useless in our case. 

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[mzwecker]

Yes*, but let's just assume here that we want to make WebHelp do the same sort of thing.

If nothing else, JustSystems could consider this a long-term feature request (ability to build portals from DITA content).

I'm also looking at Flare (WebHelp Plus) and RoboHelp (RoboHelp Server) for building a portal, but my point is that it would be nice to have a “one-stop-shop” for making WebHelp without requiring another tool and lots of importing/exporting. I imagine I am asking too much, since I should remember that XMetaL is “graphical editor for creating and editing structured documents” and not a Magic Machine for single-source shops.  Can't have everything.  I chose XMetaL so we could make “pure” DITA XML.  It's excellent for that.  Also, I LOVE the pdf3 basic format.  But I'm still suffering with my HTML/WebHelp delivery.

*The problem with Eclipse Help for us is that Eclipse Infocenter requires an Apache server and is Java-based, whereas we are very much a .NET-shop.

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[mzwecker]

I can support Su-Laine on this.  In XML View of a map you can select multiple topic refs and condition them in one move. And if you use colors to show your various conditions (Reuse > Style Conditional Text), then you can get a nice view of “what's what” so to speak.  Even if I could add conditions in Map Editor I don't think I would.

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[mzwecker]

Just to be clear, you can totally work around the “metadata form crash” by adding metadata directly in PlainText or in other views using the Element List and Attribute Inspector.  Just avoid Insert > Topic Metadata and you'll be ok.

So in the end I'm quite calm about this.  It's not a small bug, but it's not a showstopper for us. 

Good luck sorting it out.

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[mzwecker]

Thanks, but Derek's fix is apparently for old installs, but my colleague has a fresh install and he is getting the same crash.  And our crash is specific to metadata.  We're OK with our map editing.

For now we're working in plain text view, which works fine.  It's just when we edit metadata in Tag or Normal that we get the crashes.

But thanks for the tip.

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