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A^ symbol before many special characters

Explorer ,
Apr 04, 2008 Apr 04, 2008

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We are creating Microsoft HTML Help CHM output from a RoboHelp 7 HTML project (in English). This problem does not happen for other outputs such as FlashHelp, WebHelp, and Printed Documentation.

This happens with font Arial and Arial Unicode MS.

Some special characters appear fine in RH7HTML, but in the output CHM file a A^ (a capital letter A with a roof on it: Â) appears in front of each of them.

This happens for (for example): copyright, registered, mu, plus-minus, one-quarter, one-half. However, this does not happen for Greek characters and mathematical symbols.

We entered all of these special characters by copying them from Microsoft Word, where they were inserted by Insert > Symbol, where the font was "(normal text)".

Of course, we would not expect that all of Word's special characters appear in HTML output, but we do not know why that A^ character appears. In addition, we might expect it to appear in all HTML output, but it appears only in the CHM files.

Anyhow, this was fine until recently, when this suddenly started happening. We are not aware of any particular changes with RH and our project that could have triggered this.

Out of curiosity, I will paste our list of tested special characters here (just wondering how that will show up in the topic):
©®Âμ±°¼½¾×÷ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜαβγδεζηθικλμ≤≥∞Σ⅓⅔⅛⅜⅝⅞∫≈≠≡√

Thanks a lot for any advice.
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Explorer , Apr 07, 2008 Apr 07, 2008
Peter and I discussed this a bit more by e-mail, after I sent my ZIP file to him.

It appeared that a new project does not have this problem. This only happens to my large project (of course). I then removed almost everything from this project, and send it to Peter for analysis.

Peter could not really figure this out (in the sense of a true solution at least).

Out of desperation (afterall, Peter Grainge himself did not know a solution), I then decided to (un)select each and every option (that ...

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Community Expert ,
Apr 04, 2008 Apr 04, 2008

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You don't say if you have looked at the HTML to see if there is any unusual code there.

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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Explorer ,
Apr 07, 2008 Apr 07, 2008

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Dear Peter.

No, there is nothing unusual about the HTML source code. For example, for the copyright symbol, it just appears as-is, with nothing before and a space after it. I also entered it as © in the HTML editor, and it eventually converts it to the copyright symbol again (i.e., just the (c) and not the © anymore).

Anyhow, in the HTML output code, those A^ characters appear. Nothing else unusual to report here either.

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Community Expert ,
Apr 07, 2008 Apr 07, 2008

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Create a project with one topic that illustrates this problem. Zip it up and send it via my site. I've no idea what the problem is but I will take a look and try.

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Explorer ,
Apr 07, 2008 Apr 07, 2008

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Wow, Peter, thank you so very much!

I created a RH7HTML project from scratch, and of course the problem does not happen.

However, I took our big project, and removed everything from it. I only have one nearly empty topic left, and very little else. And the problem is still there.

I will send it to your e-mail address right now.

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Explorer ,
Apr 07, 2008 Apr 07, 2008

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Peter and I discussed this a bit more by e-mail, after I sent my ZIP file to him.

It appeared that a new project does not have this problem. This only happens to my large project (of course). I then removed almost everything from this project, and send it to Peter for analysis.

Peter could not really figure this out (in the sense of a true solution at least).

Out of desperation (afterall, Peter Grainge himself did not know a solution), I then decided to (un)select each and every option (that was still left), in a quest to shed more light on this.

Voila.

It appears to be the following problem:

For RoboHelp 7 HTML, if you see "A^" characters prepended to your special characters, this may be due to: HTML Help Options > Optimize CHM File Size checkbox. When it is selected, I get these "A^" characters, and not otherwise.

I suppose that for this "corrupted" project, I cannot optimize the CHM file size. Oh well.

Peter, thank you so very much for your assistance!

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New Here ,
Dec 13, 2018 Dec 13, 2018

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Hi,

Fairly new to RH, I am experiencing this recreating old Win help files which we have lost the source files for.  I managed to work round this by coding the special characters.  Really tedious.  Hoping there is a simpler solution. 

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Community Expert ,
Dec 13, 2018 Dec 13, 2018

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None I know of, as above. I assume you are just trying to recreate the source files and not generate winhelp. Nobody uses it now and it will not run on any modern OS.


See www.grainge.org for free RoboHelp and Authoring information.

@petergrainge

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 05, 2021 Jul 05, 2021

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I've experienced this problem in a different context. It's actually caused by an incompatible file encoding.

If you're a Mac user you can use these instructions for changing the file encoding (I had to change to ANSI encoding, but you might need to change to UTF-8).

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/textedit/txted1028/mac

If you're a Windows user, you need an advanced text editor like Notepad++ to be able to change the encoding.

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