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A
Anonymous
October 20, 2011
Question

Caption in converted tables positioned to left instead of above table

  • October 20, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 1792 views

I have been converting a FrameMaker 9 document to WebHelp with RoboHelp 8, and I just upgraded to FrameMaker 9 and RoboHelp 10. When I try to convert the same FrameMaker book, I now have problems with the position of table captions: they appear to the left of the header row instead of above it. This occurs when viewing the help with FireFox.

I attempted to map my tables to something other than [source] in the Conversion Settings dialog box, but the pull-down list does not give me any choices. How can I change the way that the table titles get displayed? The FrameMaker paragraph style for the table title used to be converted to a <p> element, but now gets converted to a <caption> element, but I don't see how to control the <caption> output.

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2 replies

D
David__D
Known Participant
November 19, 2013

2½ years later, I have much the same problem in TCS4.

I have a FrameMaker table format where the table title is *above* the table.

My Frame book is linked into the RoboHelp project by reference.

In RH's File > Project Settings > Import > Edit Conversion Settings for FrameMaker docs > Table,

my table style is clearly set to "[Source]", even "Caption Style" is "[Source]"

...but in my HTML Help output, the table caption is plonked at the bottom of the table, not the top.

This is a bug, surely?

I'm getting a bit sick of RoboHelp dialogs which just don't work :/

Matt-Tech Comm Tools
Community Expert
Matt-Tech Comm ToolsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 20, 2013

David, I just noticed that you mapped your table to [Source].

Map your table to a format, then address the table format via your CSS.

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
Matt-Tech Comm Tools
Community Expert
Matt-Tech Comm ToolsCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 21, 2013

Thanks Matt.

I'm a bit bemused by your deprecation of the [Source] method!   -  in as much as, if I read the RoboHelp and TechCommSuite user docs (and some tech blogs out there), there's no warnings in there about not using it, and indeed it's put forward as the way to do things.

Surely the whole point of buying TechCommSuite is that I can do 'single-source authoring' - i.e. write and format by documents in Frame, and generate different output with relative ease in RoboHelp.

A big part of the way this is supposed to work is surely that RoboHelp can understand source formatting from Frame and do a good job of matching it (creating RH_ CSS styles)?

But as you say, if I do it this way, it seems to hide these RH_ styles in a place I can't see or edit, and so when it gets them wrong, I'm scuppered and have to manually go and set up styles in the main RHStyleMappings.css file.

I started doing that yesterday with my TableTitle and Table formats. So far it's just made everything look like hell /laughs/
The captions are still under the table, not above it, and are not the wrong font size and weight too. And all cell shadings have disappeared from the table and all the internal cell rulings - I just have one box round the whole table. Hey ho  


I agree that the process could be better, but this is still the process we're currently presented with...and it works, when you understand the underlying logic and structures.

For clarity, I believe you meant FM_ styles not RH_ in your post above, yes? And by "deprecation" did you mean denigration? AFIK, Adobe's not given me the power to depricate the [Source] method from the product. And yes, I do not speak fondly nor blog fondly on that [Source] option

[Source] is a crutch. Compare the HTML created when you use it versus the HTML when you (quickly) map to the existing elements in RHStyleMapping. No contest. The elimination of inline HTML formatting and the ability to modify a static CSS are paramount to a successful and long-term solution.

I think expecting to get perfectly formatted web output without customization and/or knowledge of web formatting tools is a bit like expecting to create a world-class FrameMaker documents with nothing but Word files and Word experience to fall back on.

After all, FrameMaker reads in Word docs natively, no?

The point of the TCS is two-fold:

You can do things in days with this suite that used to take more than USD5000/project to complete. It's not entirely about producing online help. While not even close to a "free" product, I estimate the payback for the cost of a software at less than 2 months. Since the traditional product cycle is 18 months, that's pretty easy math for me. Disclosure: Since I use the maintenance contract, or software upgrade plan, my overall cost for the TCS is even lower.

However, on that front, the 3 main tools for outputting Fm to Help (Rh, WebWorks, MIF2GO) all have upfront configuration and less-than-trivial learning curves.

I choose Rh because of price. It's included with other indispensable products in the TCS Suite.

I also choose Rh because of effectiveness. I have dozens of happy clients who press a button in RoboHelp to update their Frame content, create help output, and post the content to the required server. And none of them were able to configure an online help output conduit (Their RoboHelp project with linked Fm files) on Day One.

-Matt Sullivan, FrameMaker Course Creator, Author, Trainer, Consultant
Jeff_Coatsworth
Community Expert
Jeff_CoatsworthCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 20, 2011

First - does it appear the same in other browsers (that would narrow down if it's just a Firefox issue)

Second - strangely enough, you can type right over that field - it's possible to do so in a number of places, but you'd never know it because there's no indication that the field accepts any input. I stumbled across this when formatting my breadcrumbs in the SSL - we already use ">" as a convention to indicate paths, and there appeared to be no way to change it on the dropdown list provided until I typed over it to give me " => " as my "arrow."

A
Anonymous
October 21, 2011

I actually solved this problem after I posted. I modified the CSS to include:

caption {

caption-side:top;

}

This forced FireFox to place the table title above the table.

ZeBarron
ZeBarron
Inspiring
November 10, 2011

Here's a good reference for those wanting to check the availability of the CSS property in different browsers: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_tab_caption-side.asp

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