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Jared Hess
Jared Hess
Legend
October 13, 2011
Question

Zombie <span> Tag Apocalypse!

  • October 13, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 3029 views

Using RH 9 and Windows 7, 64-bit. Recently upgraded from RH 7.

Hi Folks,

I'm trying to survive a zombie <span> apocalypse! Here's what a portion of one of my .htm topics in my project looks like inside of the Notepad++ text editor:

Notice that these span tags are empty. My understanding is that tags without any attributes in them don't do anything. Right?

Anyway, there are some 1000 emtpy <span> tags in 18 topics that don't have any attributes in them. I've checked the revision history for one of our files, and it appears that this started happening sometime after the upgrade to RH 9. The initial conversion to RH 9 didn't increase the # of <span> tags, but subsequent edits and saves to the file I checked seems to be causing it.

For example in this revision history view from Mercurial, it shows a single change from one revision to the next revision. Notice the increase in tags:

Does anyone know what's causing this? There was no visual indication this was happening inside the WYSIWYG editor in RH. It's only now when we submitted the files for localization, that our localization department ran into them when preparing this project for localization. Here's what they saw:

Any ideas why this is happening and on how to fix it? To fix it, I'm thinking of doing a Find and Replace across my project in Notepad++ and removing any empty <span> tag, and then opening the project back up inside of the RH editor. I'm hoping this would then remove the closing unmatched </span>?

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

M
meKarla
Inspiring
June 12, 2017

I am using Robohelp 2017 on Windows 10 OS. I copied a short phrase from one topic to another topic, and the phrase had conditional text on it. I went off to do something else, and when I went back to that topic, the Zombie Span Tag Apocalypse had happened!

I saw this thread and cheered for Willam Van Weeldon, but the link is broken. :-(

I know how to fix it; my question is how can I make RoboHelp stop trying to fix my code?! There should be a check box or even a registry setting to turn that bug--or feature--off.

Thanks,

Karla

Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 13, 2017

Sorry Karla - no such flag or setting AFAIK.

Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 13, 2017

This hasn't been seen since RoboHelp 9 so report it.

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Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 13, 2011

See Item 10. http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/rh9/using_rh9.htm

Rather than use a find and replace tool for only 18 topics, consider using Remove Attributes. Slower but safer. Just right click in each paragraph.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Peter Grainge
Community Expert
Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 13, 2011

Note that Item 10 is shaded blue. That is explained at the top of my page. You may have done the damage before you applied the patch, you did apply it didn't you?

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

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Jared Hess
Jared HessAuthor
Legend
October 13, 2011

I'm running version 9.0.0.228--When I do Updates from the Help menu it says my applications are up to date.

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