cross references not conditionalized

Forum|Forum|18 years ago
June 3, 2008
17 replies
2280 views

Hello Forum Members,

I am having a problem wherein my cross references which are conditionalized in the Framemaker source are not conditionalized in the RoboHelp output (even though I have set up the conditional build tags in such a way that they should be). It is definitely just the cross reference itself that is problematic. The result is such that if an entire paragraph is conditionalized in the Framemaker source, but this paragraph contains one cross reference, the RoboHelp output shows white space where the paragraph should be and a lone blue two words in the middle of the sea of white space. Has anyone else run into this and have a workaround?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you may be able to offer.

Best Regards,

Z.

FrameMaker integration

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L

Laverne_Henderson

Participant

I have tried the work around provided by Maryann8 (which is to set the conditional text settings in Frame before the import), but it's a rather ugly affair when I have also used the work around for providing specific file names.

Is Adobe planning on fixing this issue anytime soon? Or will it be left to a future release?

Z

Z__BulovaAuthor

Known Participant

Thank you Maryann8. This works gr8! Good luck with your autonumber problem.

M

Maryann8

Inspiring

Hi Jain,

Thanks for the reply.
I have tried all combinations.

In the FrameMaker Syles Conversion Properties dialog box:
If I uncheck my paragraph styles in the Ignore Autonumber column,
My note style (it is inside a two cell, one row table) displays a bullet, instead of the auto text Note.
If I check Ignore Autonumber, the bullet is gone, but still no Note text.

Another auto style, inside a one cell table, prints nothing, no matter if Autonumber is checked or unchecked.

In the Style Mappings, I have tried both ways:
mapping to [Source] and also to BodyLevel1

All different combinations have the same result:
no output of the auto text.

When I was working with a book that had only one file,
the Ignore Autonumber worked fine.

This book I am working with has nine files,
and I am loosing the auto text.

Thanks,
Mary Ann

M

Maryann8

Inspiring

"When I was working with a book that had only one file,
the Ignore Autonumber worked fine."

I have to take that back. I just re checked that project, and the way I fixed it, I removed all auto text, and typed in the text directly.

Actually, I have never been able to get auto text that is in a table to show up, no matter if Ignore Autonumber is checked or unchecked, and whether I have mapped the style, or used souce, or any combination of those two variables.

A

argus08-7xWR1K

Inspiring

I too am having trouble getting my Note styles to include the word "Note" - I don't want to deselect the "Convert Autonumber to HTML List" option because I do want my numbered and bulleted lists to be converted properly. I have tried various combinations of Ignore Autonumber and/or User Defined HTML Tag options for the Note style.

My Note style is currently mapped to Source.

Surely I'm not the only one using Frame's autonumber to insert "Note", so I'm sure I'm missing something obvious...

J

JainVivek

Inspiring

Maryann8

Do you want to check if you have selected "Convert Autonumbers to HTML list"? If you want to retain text in Autonumbers, deselect it.

M

Maryann8

Inspiring

Thanks for the suggestions, ^^&&^^.

I am using RoboHelp 7.02 and FM 8.0p77 on XP.

Yes, I really use the autonumbers tab in FM a lot, to pre insert text for my writers. Often, with no numbers, or code snippets.
"you can change the import checkbox for that para style to 'include' autonumber."

This method worked fine in my first trial run a few weeks ago, with only one file in my FM book.

When the real project came along, with many files:

the auto text (inside of tables) came in as bullets, or as nothing, just blank.

"you can use CSS to pre-pend 'NOTE' (or whatever you want) before any tag you want."

This sounds very useful for my warning tables (another subject).
The paragraph tags containing the images linked from the reference pages do not even show up anywhere in RoboHelp's list of FrameMaker files in the Style Mappings tab (in the Properties dialog box for the book).
Unless I remove the link to the image. Then they show up.

When you say use CSS to pre-pend, do you mean adding a style to the master fmstyles.css, and then link my FM para style to that style?

I have had poor luck editing the fmstyles.css (I use Dreamweaver), and having Robohelp pay much attention to it.

I have had a lot of luck editing the individual css that is created for each FM file, but my god, I have 13 books to do by next Monday, each with 10-12 files. That's 130 css files! And RoboHelp is soooo slow, even when I moved everything to my fairly spiffy computer, with lots of room and RAM. Every change to the style sheets takes about 7 minutes to build. That's on a small book (PDF has 96 pages).

M

Maryann8

Inspiring

I have had the same problems with conditional text.
I've tried many tacks- this one, so far is the only one that works for me.
But it does work.
- Forget the idea of bringing in all conditions into RoboHelp.
- Set your conditions in FrameMaker,
by setting up a boolean expression and applying to your FrameMaker files.
- In RoboHelp, In the Project Files tree, right-click on the top Icon,
the one representing your FrameMaker book.
- From the drop-down menu that appears, select Properties.
- In the Content Settings tab, in the Other Settings field at the bottom,
Check Apply FrameMaker Conditional Text Build Expression.

This worked well for me. Now if only I could get my autonumber text to appear. Sigh. Looks like I will have to go in and hand-type Notes in thousands of Note tables.

A

Anonymous

There are some other options...

If you really used autonumbers in Frame then you can change the import checkbox for that para style to 'include' autonumber... you will need to re-import your frame files to get the change to appear.

If you used an image from your reference pages in frame, AND you are using and HTML-based output format, then you can use CSS to pre-pend 'NOTE' (or whatever you want) before any tag you want.
.
See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/generate.html#before-after-content section 12.1 for an example of exactly what you want to do.

M

Maryann8

Inspiring

^^&&^^,
Thanks for your suggestion.
You said:
"you can use CSS to pre-pend 'NOTE' (or whatever you want) before any tag you want.
See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/generate.html#before-after-content section 12.1 for an example of exactly what you want to do."
----------------
I played around with CSS as described in the info from that link.
I used the advice about the CSS pseudo styles to generate auto text "Note" and graphic style:

P.note: before { content: "Note: " }
P.note {
border: solid red;
background-image: url(electric.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: left top;
height: 200px;
width: 400px;
}

The text "Note" shows up in Firefox, but not IE 6, and not the final compiled .chm file.
Internet Explorer just ignores the text.

But both FireFox and IE 6 display the electric caution icon (electric.png).
Which is the most important thing for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, this CSS works for me in standard HTML pages.

But then it's another thing to get the CSS to work in RoboHelp:
-I opened up fmstyles.css in Dreamweaver, and added the style definition shown above.
- I did a force update, and the new Style appeared as "note' in the Available Styles.
- I mapped my FrameMaker electric caution note to the "note".
- I moved a copy of the electric.png graphic into each project folder Robohelp generates for each FM chapter..
- I did a force update.

Results:
If I look at a discrete .htm file for a topic, the graphic shows up just fine. Wonderful.
But after the .chm file is compiled, there is no sign of the graphic.

So close... but no solution.

Back to square one:
Has anyone been able to get a graphic to appear in the final help file,
that FrameMaker is linking to from the reference page, as part of the paragraph tag?
(in the Advanced tag, Frame Below Pgf:)