Protected blanks from RH2020

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
September 22, 2021
5 replies
1341 views

We are currently testing an export of Robohelp content into our new Translation Management System (TMS). We noticed that protected spaces are created from Robohelp. We have not yet found out when and why Robohelp creates these protected spaces. These then cause problems for us in the TMS during translation, as we sometimes get double spaces in the translation as a result.

Attached is an example from us:

We have created a text in RH2020. If we export it via copy & paste into Microsoft Word, the whole thing looks like this:

All "°" symbols mean a protected space.

We really need support on that topic. Thanks in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

Sounds like @Sudhanshu Monga has already logged it in their system; that might be why it's disappeared from the Tracker. PM them to confirm.

S

Sudhanshu Monga

Adobe Employee

Hi Marc,

Have you by any chance, added multiple consecutive spaces, and then removed the extra spaces so that only one space remains? In HTML, multiple consecutive spaces(the ones that come from the spacebar) cannot exist, they have to be separated by the protected spaces (also known as nbsp-Non Breaking SPace) i.e., in author view if you hit spacebar repeatedly, it will add spaces, but some of them will be nbsp.

It seems that in RH removing consecutive spaces leaves behind one of the nbsp, while it is expected to be spacebar space character. For this issue, we have raised this ticket.

Now coming back to your other problem, is the nbsp getting converted to double space? Is it happening in the XLIFF export in the RH or are you using some other translation tool to translate your content?

C

Christian L..

Participating Frequently

Hello, I've just checked the HTML output. Here are no NBSP-Tags, but non-breakable spaces as the special ASCII character. Here is the HTML output with special characters in Word:

It seems unlikely that there were multiple consecutive spaces at this points, but I will aks the colleague who wriote the text initially. Is it right that every consecutive space after an existing one will result in a non-breakable space? This would easily lead to this issue.

We are using the Robohelp way (Item "Tranlations") to generate the XLIF files. But as you can see, the original text includes the characters, so this is no issue regarding export, the characters are exportes "as-is"

S

Sudhanshu Monga

Adobe Employee

Hello,
"Is it right that every consecutive space after an existing one will result in a non-breakable space?"
Yes, that is the way to add consecutive spaces in HTML, and that is what we do in RH.

So let's suppose you intend to add 5 consecutive spaces, you hit spacebar key 5 times. Under the hood, it might be looking like this: "&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp", 3 nbsp, and 2 spaces. It could be any combination of nbsps and spaces, it just needs to avoid 2 consecutive space characters somehow. We do this because the browser ignores multiple consecutive spacebar spaces and reduces it to a single space.

Can you tell us more about the issues nbsp is causing? How is it disrupting the translation workflow, as there was mention of double spaces in the post?

A

Amebr

Community Expert

If the project has been upgraded from Classic, it might be a legacy from the old version of RH. It was very easy to accidentally add non-breaking spaces before a capital letter.

C

Christian L..

Participating Frequently

We've used RH 2019 before. But this content is newly edited, so the content was directly created in RH2020 without copying it first or migrating from an old version

Jeff_Coatsworth

Community Expert

@Marc M. - did you have non-breaking spaces in your originally authored RH project? Look at an example location in the HTML/code view in RH and see if the spaces are defined as non-breaking ones to begin with. If they are, then that's the source of your issue. If they aren't, then it must be something else that's either converting them to non-breaking spaces or interpreting them as that type.

S

Sudhanshu Monga

Adobe Employee

Hi Marc,
Does you originally authored content in RH contain the protected spaces, or are they getting added after translation?