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Page size bug with non Cover or TOC Front matter page and Empty Page issues PDF output

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
December 23, 2022
12 replies
1363 views

We recently upgraded from Robohelp 2020 to 2022.0.346. This broke our previous outputs presets, so that was a bummer, but the new options seemed like enough of an upgrade to deal with rewriting the template for the new style.

I'm having several issues, the largest 2 being the following:

No layout applied to Front Matter page, making it the wrong size

I have a topic with a proprietary warning in it that is the 2nd page of my PDF and is meant to print on the back of the cover when doing dual side printing. I'm in the US, so I print things letter size. I have ensured that every page out in my template has the same size settings, but the proprietary warning page always come out at A4 size in the PDF. I assume this is happening because it is a Front Matter page, but not one of the formally designated special ones and perhaps the Common layout isn't pointing at it correctly. I added text identifying all my page layouts and ran an output and that page doesn't appear to use any of the templates. Is there a way to fix this? I tried making a Topic Layout and pasting the code from the Common layout into that file and applying it to the topic, but it didn't work. I also dug around in the .plt and .tpl files in the template folder and examined them in VS Code outside of Robohelp and tried guessing what the xml for the front matter might be, but was unsurprisingly not successful.

Content inside the Empty_Page Template not visible in PDF

I prefer to start my chapters on Odd pages, so this often causes a blank Even page. It makes sense when looking at the PDF as a 2 page view or in the printed view, but I've gotten so many comments from reviewers using a single page view it is irritating. I was excited to have an empty page layout, but nothing I put in the Contents div on that page is shown, so I can't put "This page intentionally left blank.".

Things I don't like about the 2022

Covers now live in the template and not the TOC.
I have to duplicate my previous CSS file that held everything into multiple templates and if I make changes I have to do it to each one instead of simply pointing toward the CSS file in my assets. So far I've continued to use the topics CSS, but the help documentation indicates this may cause cascading style issues, of which I've seen a few already, so I'll have to go and check through everything.
The Template Page Layouts doesn't have a Preview tab.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Peter Grainge

Adobe have come back to me with a fix.

If you change the page size where shown, it will override all the settings for the page layouts. To be clear, in a project with all the page layouts set to A5, I changed the setting shown to A4 and generated. All pages were A4 in the PDF.

Set your layout.css to Letter and you should be OK. When you have changed "page" to Letter I think that right and left will default to blank, that's fine. Otherwise also change them to Letter.

Please mark this as the correct answer if it does fix it for you.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I have been able to get an answer on the page size.

Double click the page layout and go to Page Properties on the right. There you can set page sizes.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

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R

rgugsAuthor

Participating Frequently

I have set the page size to letter on every single page layout. The issue is none of these layouts are being applied to this page in the Front Matter.

This is the TOC for that. This is just a test TOC to work out the formatting.

My page properties with the size set.

And here is my Empty_Page as formatted in Robohelp and what is output. This obviously isn't how I want it formatted, just put text in different places to see what prints out.

Here you can see it is set up correctly in the Empty Page section.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

No layout applied to Front Matter page, making it the wrong size

I raised this with an Adobe contact and I believe there is a way of doing it. Unfortunately I can't recall it so I will have to go back to Adobe and that will not be until the new year.

Content inside the Empty_Page Template not visible in PDF

Initially I replied "Empty pages are defined by whatever you set on the right below. You can edit that Page Layout where shown on the left." Then I looked at my topic on PDF Templates at RH2022 PDF Templates (grainge.org) and saw it should show the text you want automatically. See the table about the page layouts. I will have to clarify that with Adobe so again it will be after the holidays. Meantime you should be able to edit the layout. Let me know please.

Things I don't like about the 2022

Covers now live in the template and not the TOC. This is so that the whole template can be exported to other projects. All the assets required by the template are within.
I have to duplicate my previous CSS file that held everything into multiple templates and if I make changes I have to do it to each one instead of simply pointing toward the CSS file in my assets. So far I've continued to use the topics CSS, but the help documentation indicates this may cause cascading style issues, of which I've seen a few already, so I'll have to go and check through everything. It can cause issues but it is unlikely.
The Template Page Layouts doesn't have a Preview tab. Please follow this link to rrequest new features. https://tracker.adobe.com. Post the link to your feature request in this thread and others can vote for it. The more people who do so, the higher it gets prioritised. Meantime you will have to double click them.

I will get back to you when I know how to change the paper size.

Meantime I'd like to know where to post a request that the USA changes to A4 as used in pretty much the rest of the world. 🙂

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

Use menu (bottom right) to mark as Best Answer or to Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.

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