This sometimes happens to me when using HTML Help Workshop (which the toolkit uses on the back end) to generate a helpset and the machine runs out of memory or swap space before it can finish the search. Recently wit HTML Help Workshop, I generated a helpset that had only 60 topics and the search never appeared (same symptoms as you noted). I tried the exact same build with the same version of Workshop on a new machine with 1 GB RAM and bam, search appeared just fine, complete helpset generated.

Can you try the build on a more powerful machine? Also ensure that you have no other applications running when you perform the build.

Paul Masalsky

EMC

From: Paul Anderson <paul.anderson@...>
Subject: [dita-users] Broken search in HTMLHelp output
To: dita-users@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, July 3, 2008, 7:15 PM

Greetings All,

Back when we were using DITA-OT 1.3.1, we created HTMLHelp .chm files
with no problems. Now that we've migrated to DITA-OT 1.4.2.1, our
HTMLHelp files still publish successfully and the Contents and Index
tabs are working just fine. Unfortunately, the full-text search is
completely broken. No matter what we enter in the search field we get
a "No topics found" message.

I'm aware of the persnickety nature of the HTMLHelp compiler
regarding encoding so I pulled down Deborah's wonderful "plus" plug-
ins and incorporated them into our HTMLHelp build process. As I am
building on a US English Windows XP system, my system encoding is
Windows 1252 and my .hhp, .hhc, .hhk, and all my .html files all
appear to have a Windows 1252 encoding . . . but the search still
fails every time.

Any ideas?

Best regards,

Paul Anderson
Compuware Corporation