Published WebHelp: file not accessible

[Carl]

This could be a simple problem, but it's baffling me: I am creating a new project and am compiling a WebHelp every so often to check the output. It worked fine for a while, but suddenly I am getting this in my browser:

Code: Select all

Your file couldn't be accessed
It may have been moved, edited or deleted.
ERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND

The most puzzling thing is, I am creating a new structure out of existing content, from a project that's been published and distributed already. I simply created a new parent ditamap, and then created a series of chapter books organizing the contently differently.

Any idea why it suddenly can't find my files? I am using the same WebHelp transformation as I've always used.

[ionela]

Hi,

As it is a new project, the first thing you need check is the integrity of your DITA map, to make sure that your maps and topics are valid, and all the relationships between them are working. You can do this by using the 'Validate and Check for Completeness' action from the DITA Map menu (there is a corresponding icon in the toolbar). For more details about this action please check this topic from our user-guide:
DITA Map Validation and Completeness Check

If your DITA map is valid, could you please provide us more details about how you deploy the Webhelp output: do you load the resources from a file system or from a HTTP server? In case you deploy the WebHelp output on a server, please check the deployment procedure to make sure that all the resources are available(deployed) on that server.

Regards,
Ionela

[Carl]

I have done a validation, and aside from some warnings, I don't see anything that would prevent the WebHelp from being generated successfully. As I mentioned, I've been generating WebHelp every so often as I create the new structure, and previous outputs were successful.

Oddly, I created a PDF and it came out perfectly--all topics accounted for. This could be a clue: why the PDF transformation worked, while the WebHelp cannot find the files?

BTW, it's not like it can't find the WebHelp entirely: the main page in our WebHelp comes up, with our company logo. But when I click any of the icons to enter the user guide, systems guide, or glossary, then it says "not found".

[Carl]

I forgot to mention: I load the resources from my local hard drive.

[ionela]

Hi,

To further investigate this issue on our side, so we would need some more details.
Therefore, could you please send us the entire transformation console log. For this, you can set the 'Show console output' option to 'Always':
DITA Logging Preferences > Show console output
Also, it would be very useful to create a minimal valid sample project (DITA Map + topics) that you can send us for analysis.
You can send the files to support [AT] oxygenxml [DOT] com.

One more thing you need to check, as you've mentioned you generate the output very often is to make sure you generate the output to a new clean output directory (this way you avoid possible issues with leftover files from previous output generation). There is also a parameter in the WebHelp transformation 'clean.output' that you can set to 'yes'. Make sure you create a backup of the output folder before setting this parameter in case you might need some files from the previous output transformation folder.

Regards,
Ionela

[Carl]

I figured out the problem--it was a simple (silly) mistake, easily corrected. But the output from OxygenXML was very unexpected--I don't know if it points to a bug in your product or in DITA. Let me try to describe it succinctly:

• In constructing my new project, I created a new top level ditamap at the root level, and I reused an existing ditmap at the root level. When I did a test compile, everything worked: my WebHelp main page had links to the two top-level ditmaps.

• I then decided to create a third top-level ditamap. However I linked this ditamap to an existing ditamap file that was one level down, for example: /subdirectory/usethis.ditamap

As a result, when I recompiled my WebHelp, none of my top-level links worked! The two that worked before suddenly started showing "page not found", even though those two were not changed--all I did was add a third top-level link that was bad.

So why did this happen? How can adding one bad ditamap link to the top level suddenly caused the others to stop working as well?

[Costin]

Hi Carl,

From the details you provided, most probably, you have some resources (like submaps, topics, or any other resources), external to the main DITA Map folder.
To better notice if that's your case, if you have resources outside of the main DITA Map folder , you could open the main DITA Map in the DITA Maps Manager view and then use the "Validate and Check for Completeness" tool from the view's toolbar. Make sure that, in the validation tool, you set the "Report references to resources outside of the DITA Map folder" option.

It is known that the DITA Open Toolkit has some issues processing this kind of external resources, but there is a simple solution that you could ma use of. That stands in placing the .ditamap file that corresponds to your main DITA Map (which referrs any other submaps and topics) in a parent folder (a folder that would be on top of any other folders that containt the rest of the resources)

You can find more details on this approach in this section from the Oxygen User-Guide.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Costin