Newbie hyperlink problems

[Craiglea]

Please forgive what may be a slightly naïve question.

I have been intending to create an iSilo document from multiple HTML documents with the links between the individual source documents handled by hyperlinks within the documents. There is one top-level html file linking to a layer below and in some cases these contain individual chapters linked to via hyperlinks.

I guess the main point is that there are up to four levels of html and it all works extremely well in a browserand all the individual documents can be reached from the top-level HTML. I have specified this top-level document as the only source file in iSiloX.

When I tried to convert this structure I got a single PDB file of only 4kB and the conversion was far too quick. I reckon that for some reason the hyperlinks in the top document are no being followed to bring in the lower levels. Having set the link depth in the conversion properties I reckoned this would be automatic.

I have used multiple HTML files before but in the case there wasn't a hierarchy and I just pulled all the sources into iSiloX.

A couple of points that may be relevant...

I'm running this on a Mac using ISiloX 4.2. The hyperlinks within the HTML (and hence the filenames of the target files) include spaces.

Thanks for any help.

[iSilo]

If you are using absolute links (e.g., fully specified paths), try changing them to relative links as absolute links may have interpretation problems on the Mac.

[Craiglea]

I think I am already using relative links. All the files are in a single folder and the links are in the form file_x.html rather than using the full path.

I guess the positive side of you post is that it sounds as though they should work so I may not be too far off the mark.

Cheers

[iSilo]

Would you be able to post the .ixl file and the source HTML files in a zip so that we can try to reproduce the problem?

[Craiglea]

Would you be able to post the .ixl file and the source HTML files in a zip so that we can try to reproduce the problem?

Doubtful, the HTML files and associated image files are about 5 MB in total.

After posting here last night I transferred the files over to my Windows machine at work and ran a conversion through that version of iSiloX. I had none of the same problems and was able to build a PDB file will all the sub-documents linked correctly. The HTML files were exactly the same and while the ixl would be different I did select the same options.

Is there anything that needs to be different in Mac files in order for iSiloX to process hyperlinks? :confused:

[iSilo]

There is nothing different that you would need to do on the Mac compared to Windows.

How about uploading a zip with just the HTML, .ixl, and resulting 4K .pdb file if posting is just a matter of size? If it is a matter of privacy, you can email the whole set of files including the images to http://www.isilo.com/img/email.jpg.

[Craiglea]

Ok, I've cut the files down to a subset and had the same result of a 4k PDB file with these. The attached zip files contains the HTML, image files, ixl file and the resulting output. They all just sit in a flat directory structure. I've stripped out the Mac._ files to minimise the size.

There's nothing private in there just a work in progress.

Thanks for the help.

[iSilo]

In your .ixl file, you have set the Document/Text Encoding/Source encoding to UTF-16. None of the HTML files in the zip specify an encoding, so if you specify UTF-16, that is what is assumed for your source HTML files that do not specify their encoding. But by looking at the source files, none of them are UTF-16 encoded.

In iSiloX, change the assumed source encoding to either Default or Windows-1252 and then try reconverting.

[Craiglea]

Once you posted I remember thinking the same thought about 2:00am this morning (half asleep - but I should get a life) as I realised that this was the only difference I could think of between the the two configurations.

I will give it a try in the next day or so as I am away from base for a couple of days.

Cheers.

[Craiglea]

Thanks for all that. This seems to have cleared that problem. :)

I still have a problem building on the Mac as not all of the sub-documents are pulled in to build the iSilo file. All the files are using the same encoding and the hyperlinks and file names all match up so this seems to be another problem.

I can build everything I need successfully on a Windows box so I will use that approach until I manage to figure out just what is going on with the Mac.

[Edit: The problem seems to be due to the length of the URL. I took a few characters off a 33 character link and immdiately that document built OK in iSiloX. Not a problem with Windows though].

Cheers.

[Voltage Spike]

The problem seems to be due to the length of the URL. I took a few characters off a 33 character link and immdiately that document built OK in iSiloX. Not a problem with Windows though.
Yes, that is the case. iSiloX for Mac, in order to remain compatible with pre-OS X systems, uses the older path scheme. This means that file names are limited in the number of characters and the path separator is "weird" (a ':', I believe).

iSiloXC for Mac OS X does not have this limitation.

It would have been kinda' nice if the developers had standardized on one "Path" format and handled it appropriately in the clients...