Bulleted List Becomes Numbered List in RH8

Report · Jun 24, 2009

Hi,

I have recently upgraded to RH8 and now my list styles are behaving oddly.

Prior to this, I could select a bulleted list style from the styles at the top left of the RoboHelp window and apply the list style to the text.

Now when I try to do that, the bulleted list becomes a numbered list.

To apply the bulleted list, I have to open the styles pod, select the list styles, then double-click on the list style to apply it to the new text.

Is there any way to tweak RoboHelp 8 so that I can use the drop-down field at the top left of the RoboHelp window to apply a bulleted list style?

Thanks,

Sarah

Report · Aug 05, 2009

Hi Sarah - we've seen the same issue. Our style sheet entries for bullets looks like this:

P.BulletList {
margin-top: 0pt;
margin-bottom: 4.5pt;
list-style: disc;
}

LI.P-BulletList {
list-style: disc;
}

Though it is available in the styles drop-down, as you say, in RH8, its selection now creates a numbered list, until you follow up with a double-click on the list style in the styles pod. We need to apply both to get the desired spacing between bullets. In RH7, it all worked quite nicely from the drop-down.

I'll post back if we find out what the issue is.

Report · Aug 06, 2009

I could be way wrong here but in HTML what defines a list a being ordered (numbered) or unordered (bulleted) is the use of OL and UL tags. You are using the P tag instead. Sure the reference to disc implies you want an unordered list but implication doesn't work.

I suspect what you need is a UL tag with a class.

http://www.w3schools.com is a good place to learn more.

Any HTML gurus out there, please feel free to jump on this and correct it.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

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

Report · Aug 06, 2009

Hi,

Peter, you're right. A paragraph with a list-style is not a list. If you define a bullit-style for a paragraph, you overwrite the style of the list and although the list style should not overwrite the paragraph style, your code is invalid.

@RoboHobo: How many kind (bulleted, numbered, multi level, etc) of lists do you use? The way to solve this depends on the way you work: Do you only select the paragraph, or do you create a list and then select the paragraph.

I would recommend removing the list-style definition from your two styles and instead use the styles ul {list-style-type: disc} and ol {list-style-type: decimal} instead. When you use different list styles, this may seriously mess up your existing lists.

If you want to keep working the way you do, add Your style definition will look like this:

P.BulletList {
margin-top: 0pt;
margin-bottom: 4.5pt;
list-style: disc;
}

LI.P-BulletList {
list-style: disc;
}

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 10, 2009

In RH8 I tried all of the suggested solutions, but wasn't able to make the numbered list work. The styles that I am having problems with in my css are: BULLET and BULTIN.

I was hoping that someone would be willing to post a sample css that works for them.

I am also attaching my original css if anyone would be willing to take a look.

Thanks in advance,

Debbie

Report · Aug 10, 2009

Hi,

I'll take a look when you're css is accessible on the forum. Can you also attach a topic where you have problems?

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 10, 2009

Debbie

There is nothing attached or queued.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

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

Report · Aug 10, 2009

I am trying to send the document again.

I am also attaching a topic where the problem can be seen. The first two lines I have applied the "BULLET" style from the drop-down list and it appears as a numbered list. Further down in the topic you can see a bulleted list where I seleted the "BULLET" style and then clicked the bullet icon. This appears now as it should. But, I'd like to avoid the extra step.

Report · Aug 10, 2009

Hi,

There are no files attached. When you add a comment, use the Attach Files button below the text field.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 10, 2009

Both times I clicked the "Browse" button, selected the files and then clicked "Post Message". But, I guess it didn't work.

Report · Aug 10, 2009

Hi,

I've send my e-mail adress in a private message. Please e-mail the files.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 11, 2009

Hi again,

I devised an easy solution that worked for dsarig, and I think it will work for anyone who has the same problem.

The problem:

This problem is not the fault of Robohelp, but is a problem arising for the conversion from html to xhtml and the wrong use of lists. When you don't create a list by clicking one of the list buttons, but select a paragraph style with a bullit, RoboHelp automatically creates an ordenened list. This was no problem in RoboHelp 7, because the paragraph style could overwrite the list style. RoboHelp 8 uses xhtml and xhtml is much stricter than html. This means that a paragraph list style can no longer overwrite a list style. You can however overwrite the list style with a list item style.

The workaround:

Say that you have the classes P.BULLET and LI.P-BULLET, both define a list style. Whenever you choose the paragraph class P.BULLET (without first clicking the list button), RoboHelp creates the following HTML code:

<ol>

</ol>

This list is not a unordened list, but an ordened list that uses numbers. The paragraph class can no longer overwrite the list style. You can solve this by adding the following code to the class LI-P-BULLET:

LI.P-BULLET { list-style-type: disc !important; }

This will give any list element with the class P-BULLET a standard bullet. To make all your lists work again, use a find and replace tool to replace

<li> with:

This will fix any problems, but it is not a solution, since it doesn't change the list itself.

The solution:

Stop using paragraphs as lists! Using paragraphs as lists will probably cause problems in the future when RoboHelp starts using HTML 5 or the next version of XHTML.

These two ways of working will help avoid problems in the future:

- Create multi-level list styles, these lists give you the best styling options. Use these lists instead and replace (if you can) all faulty lists by new ones.

- Create list classes for every list you use and applay classes to lists using the HTML editor. (ul.list1 {} will be <ul class="list1"> and ol.number {} will be <ol class="numbers"> (The best solution, but it requires more work.)

Greets,

Willam

Report · Aug 30, 2009

Hello William (or any other kind soul out there!) -

I appreciate your expertise in RH8, this is the exact problem we are having with our upgrade from x5 to 8:

"These two ways of working will help avoid problems in the future:

- Create multi-level list styles, these lists give you the best styling options. Use these lists instead and replace (if you can) all faulty lists by new ones.

- Create list classes for every list you use and apply classes to lists using the HTML editor. (ul.list1 {} will be <ul class="list1"> and ol.number {} will be <ol class="numbers"> (The best solution, but it requires more work.)"

I am not sure how to apply your solution. The styles that are giving me a problem on my attached css are:

CGRoundBullet
CGSquareBullet
RRoundBullet
RSquareBullet
TableTextAlpha

The rest of the styles are fine, it's these that are coming out as numbers instead of bullets or lowercase letters. If you could edit just one of these, I should be able to mirror the others. I've spent probably 15 hours on this so far, so any assistance you can provide would help immensely!

Thanks

Warren

Report · Aug 30, 2009

Hi,

From a glance in you CSS, my guess is that your problem is not in the style sheet. Please check the html of a faulty list. It probably has a paragraph class attached, but not a list class. It probably looks something like this:

<ol>

</ol>

Since you haven't specified a list style within the list itself, or within the list item, the browser uses the default for an ordered list. To correct this, use a search and replace tool to replac all instances of <li> with <li class=p-CGRoundBullet>.

You'll have to do this search and replace for every list style that is causing problems. Note that the correct list class is always p- followed by the exact paragraph name. If you want more help, please post back the html of a faulty list.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 31, 2009

The only way I've found to get this right is to manually define the font-family and font-size for my custom number and bullet lists.

(assuming your html looks like <li class="p-style">)

So given your P definition contains:

font-family: Verdana;
font-size: 10.0pt;

I would add that to your numbered/alpha styles in both the p.style and li.p- versions.

The bullets are more problematic, as they look different in Design, Preview and Output. I can't help with that so much, as I think you are implementing the multi-level numbering, which I rejected as too hard to fix manually in case of emergency (plus I can't get the hang of the dialog box, but other people haven't had a problem, so maybe it's just me).

I believe this is a bug in the conversion process, starting with RH7 - in old versions, the p.style and li.p- styles didn't need to be the same, as the li.p- seemed to inherit a lot from the p.style.

HTH,

Amebr

Report · Aug 31, 2009

Hi,

The font-family and font-size control the font and the font size. To control the list style, you need list-style-type. You only have to define this with the list itself (ol and ul), of with the list item (li). Defining the list-style-type for a paragrapgh won't do anything in xhtml (robo8).

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 31, 2009

Oops. You're right. Long day and my brain translated it into my own frustration of wrong font and size.

Report · Aug 31, 2009

Hi William,

Thanks for the quick response! I came to the same conclusion as you regarding the missing class in the HTML code, but the find and replace option isn't going to really help. My project has over 3200 topics and while the find and replace could make those changes fairly quickly, it doesn't address these lists going forward rather than manually adding this each and every time, which really defeats the purpose of having a list!

There has to be something that takes the style sheet and applies it to the list choices you are making in the topics. It seems as though the li class is missing when bullets are chosen and I don't know how to tell RoboHelp to add that when a bullet is selected.

Here is an example of a CGSquareBullet I added to an existing topic:

And instead of showing up like a bullet, it appears as a 1.

Anything else you can think of to get around this?

Warren- 221-3210

Senior Communications Support Specialist

Report · Aug 31, 2009

Hi,

Can you post a topic with such a list. If I see the topic, I may be able to come up with a solution.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Aug 31, 2009

I've finally gotten my RH8 bullets and numbering dissertation sorted. 🙂

The way I see it, there are three methods of applying styles in Robohelp HTML 7 & 8.

Assumptions

- This is specifically for HTML list styles. See the Robohelp help topic "About list styles" for as close to a definition as I could find.

It excludes advanced (multi-level) lists and autonumbered (paragraph) lists.

- You are upgrading a project from a Robohelp version RH6 or below. (Possibly also RH7, but I haven't tried this properly yet.)

1. Style drop-down list only.

This is the method used to apply styles in older versions of RH, except that the code produced in older versions is like that produced in method 3 below.

This list displays only Paragraph and Character Styles.

It produces code like:

<li>My text

2. Styles Pod.

This method allows you select the type of style you want to apply, for example, List, Character, multi-level list, etc, and is applied using a double-click.

It produces code like:

<li class="p-ab_list">My text

3. Style drop-down list and Styles Pod.

This method requires two actions to apply a style to lists and produces code like:

<li class="p-ab_listandpara" type="A">My text

This is essentially the code produced by older versions of RH.

As Method 1 above is not a valid implementation of HTML lists, a change of work practice is required when moving to RH7 or 8. I could think of 3 methods, depending on your requirements.

1. Change to using the Styles pod to apply number and bullet styles.

a. The li.p- definition must be redefined to incorporate all the styling from the p definition.

b. The p. definition must be removed.

c. All topics must be edited to reset numbered and bulleted lists to Normal style (and in some cases, manually remove the numbering and bullets), then reapply the appropriate style using the Styles pod.

2. Apply both the Drop-down list style and the Styles Pod list style.

a. The font-family and font-size definition must be defined in both the p and li.p- definitions to ensure the text font and number/bullet font are the same size.

b. Margin and padding definitions should not be changed, as this will cause the spacing to be applied twice.

c. Apply number and bullet types using the drop-down list and then the List Styles area of the Styles pod. Or twice within the Styles pod - Paragraph and List.

3. Combination of 1 and 2.

a. Create new styles to replace your old number and bullet styles going forward. Create only the li.p- definitions and incorporate all the styling from the old p. definition. (Assuming the font and size will be the same for all lists, this could be defined in a separate OL, LI definition.)

b. Update the old bullet and number styles so that the font-family and font-size are defined in both the p. and li.p- definitions.

c. When creating new content, use the Styles pod to apply the list style.

d. When modifying old content, you can either apply the styles as per 2c. above or reformat just the section you are working on, as per 1c. above.

Using this method, old and new content should look the same, only the HTML behind the scenes will be different.

I think that covers just about everything, except why I have excluded autonumbering and multi-level lists. Let me know if there are any areas that aren't clear.

Amebr

Report · Sep 01, 2009

Hi,

I don't know if your cum laude Amebr. The methods you describe are the most common methods of working with list in RoboHelp, but are not the preferred and correct method of working with lists.

In all these cases, the list style is defined trough the list element (li). If you want to style a list, you normally style the list itself, not the items in the list. It's like buying a red closet, but since you want it to be blue, you paint every piece yourself, instead of buying a blue closet altogether.

Most RoboHelp lists I see are build like this:

<ul>

</ul>

The browser take the default list style for the list, in this case a bullet (the red closet), but because the list item (the blue paint) may be defined otherwise. The correct way is ofcourse to buy the blue closet:

</ul>

This way, the browser will not take the default list style, but correctly apply the list style you define. You can still apply paragraph and list classes, but you only have to define the unique elements for every item. This keeps your code and your style sheet smaller and easier to maintain.

I'm fully aware that RoboHelp doesn't fully support this yet, but for the time being, I'd recommend using Robo's multi level lists, since they result in valid HTML and will probably be easily converted to full fledged lists in some version still to come.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Sep 01, 2009

I completely agree that the easiest way to style a list is through the OL/UL tags.

However, everything I've written is designed to work with RH WYSIWYG, which as far as I can see doesn't allow you to select OL/UL styles (e.g. OL.MyFirstNumber), only LI. We don't have the time or inclination to manually code in HTML. I did indicate in 3c that assuming your font and size are the same, that information could be defined in the OL, UL definitions, and this also applies to any spacing that may be common, but for us cannot apply to the list-style-type due to our need for a number of different numbering and bullet styles.

Additionally, we have to work around legacy issues in Robohelp. Our projects have come through from RH9 (i.e Blue Sky RH9 not the not yet to exist Adobe RH9) and have a lot of legacy / bad html in them. As we don't have the resources to change over 15 large projects in one go, we are going with the Combination method I described. This will allow the legacy code to work and allow us to apply a style once, rather than multiple times (as required in method 2), while eventually ending up with cleaner code and removing the incorrect P tags out of the list items.

I've discounted the multi-level numbering for a number of reasons.

1. I have difficulty working out how to get all the levels working together and the help doesn't help. I admit I've given up as the HTML lists are much simpler to set up.

2. If we do have to manually tweak some HTML, the code isn't standard HTML or CSS. I'm sure I could figure it out, but some of my colleagues aren't so technically minded. (In fact a few have practically fainted at the thought of standard HTML, let alone CSS.)

3. I'm really not impressed by the output generated by multi-level lists. It uses deprecated font tags and lots of spans and non-breaking spaces, and ultimately doesn't use OL, UL or LI tags at all.

Here's a sample:

<p>a)<span style='font:6.0pt "Times New Roman"'><font size="1" style="font-size:6pt;">     </font></span>item 1</p>

The HTML lists I describe at least result in clean HTML and CSS:

<ol type="a">
<li class="p-ab_list">item 1</li>
(yes, "type" is deprecated also, but much better than tonnes of FONT tags and nbsps, IMO. )

Hope this helps explain the reasons for the methods I described.

Hopefully non-breaking spaces will now show in the code sample. Message was edited by: Amebr

Report · Sep 01, 2009

Hi,

I completely understand your reasons, and for all my colleages (except 1), only the thought of html is terrifying. Still remains that I code a list in html much faster than I can use the RoboHelp styles to create a list. My colleages use the same method of work you use, to avoid any future problems.

You're right about the multi level lists, but even though they are crap, I think they provide the best forward compatibility for future versions of RoboHelp, for not so technical technical authors.

Greet,

Willam

Report · Sep 01, 2009

Ah, we're probably 90% on the same page, then. With a slight variation of opinion on multi-level lists.

P.S. for anyone following, in the code sample above, the big gap after the FONT tag should have about 8 or 10 nbsp entities listed - couldn't figure out how to fix it and now can't edit it.

Report · Sep 02, 2009

Unfortunately the solutions I've seen thus far won't really work for my folks and how they use RoboHelp, but I appreciate all of the assistance I've received. Here is a question: Would switching my project to Pure HTML help my problem at all?