How do I map structured frameMaker elements to robohelp not using paragraph styles

Report · Dec 23, 2014

I need to map elements within a Structured FrameMaker file into RoboHelp structure without using Paragraph Styles.

I have nicely structured FrameMaker but the appearance is dictated by the EDD element having text attributes. We do not use Paragraph Styles.

There must surely be a way of mapping directly from FrameMaker elements into Robohelp 'elements'

I want to get HTML5 etc using the FM12 Publish method (or even RoboHelp via TCS5).

I have done a fair amount of searching but have found nothing to help. Can this be done?

Report · Dec 23, 2014

So, you're saying that your EDD applies formatting directly as properties rather than assigning a paragraph or character style? Why? If you let the EDD set a style, then it's a bit easier to update the formatting .. you just go into the template and change the style's properties rather than needing to go into the EDD, make the edits, then import the EDD back into the template. I'd update the EDD to use styles.

However .. that wasn't your question!

As far as I know the answer is .. you can't do that. RH mapping is done based on style tags, not the actual properties. If you're assigning properties, RH will do its best to emulate the FM formatting, but you'll end up with really messy HTML with lots of hard-coded @style attributes. Basically, for the same reason this isn't good in HTML, it's also not great in FM .. which is why it's best to use styles.

I'm not an RH expert though .. maybe there's some secret way to do what you're looking for.

Cheers,

...scott

Report · Jan 12, 2015

Hi

Sorry for not getting back before. Been on another project temporarily.

As to your first point. The answer here is yes we do apply text/paragraph formatting directly in the EDD and do not use styles. The particular application that we are talking about here complies with a very tight formatting specification. Our users, from our experience, really like to tweak the styles and then are not happy with the comments that they get from their clients. So we remove the temptation .

And this is why, of course, I raised the original question. We do get a creditable output from RoboHelp from the formatting of the FrameMaker files but of course there are several aspects that need to be improved (and yes you are right about the messy HTML which results from this path). I had more or less come to the conclusion that there was no way to map our elements to the HTML elements.

We are looking at modifying the application to apply pseudo styles (i.e. just style names with no formatting resulting from them) so that we can map them. But of course it would have been really good not to have to do this.

But thanks very much for your input.

Regards