Different WebHelp format for same paragraph style?

[TimLMun]

We are using Tech Comm Suite 4.0 (FM 11 and RH 10) on on Windows 7 (64 bit) environment.

We have a paragraph style called "Bullet" (without the quotes).  The indentation after the bullet is set with a tab as follows in the paragraph designer: •\t  (where the tab is set at .25").

It publishes to WebHelp, and apparently RoboHelp simulates the .25" tab with nine instances of: &nbsp.  The indentation and word wrap behave as you would expect, with the following exception.

If the initial word in the bulleted list has a character style applied to it (default FM bold, a specific bold character style, or some other custom character style), RoboHelp creates three additional instances of: &nbsp.

Here is the actual code of the WebHelp output as it *should* be:

<p class="FM_Bullet">•<span style='word-spacing:normal; font:6.0pt "Times New Roman"'><font size="1" style="font-size:6pt;">         </font></span>Determine which functions you can use.</p>

Here is the actual code of the WebHelp output with the extra three &nbsp:

<p class="FM_Bullet">•<span style='word-spacing:normal; font:6.0pt "Times New Roman"'><font size="1" style="font-size:6pt;">         </font></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman; font-size:7.0pt"><font size="1" style="font-size:7pt;">   </font></span><span class="FM_Bold">Merge Customer Errors</span>—A record of errors that occurred when customers were merged.</p>

The last three instances of "&nbsp" (between "7pt;">" and "</font>") means the indentation after the bullet is too long, and when the words wrap around they go back to the indentation that is expected. This results in an uneven word wrap in bulleted lists.

The CSS file definition for "Bullet" is identical either way.

Does anyone know why RoboHelp inserts three extra "&nbsp" when a font style is applied to the initial word?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Tim

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

HI Tim, you need to map your Fm style Bullet to something like BodyLevel1 in Rh, and choose Convert Number to: HTML List.

From there, you can control the display of the HTML using the RHStyleMapping.css file.

See the recording of my Adobe webinar at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/event/index.cfm?event=set_registered&id=2266404&loc=en_us

HTH,

-Matt

Matt R. Sullivan
co-author Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11

[TimLMun]

Thanks for the idea Matt.

Because we have several writers who are unfamiliar with RoboHelp, I create a RoboHelp project for the content, and then the non-RoboHelp writers follow a very simple process and publish WebHelp directly out of FrameMaker.  It is a very efficient and streamlined process--if it works properly.

What we decided to do as a work-around was to break up the online help files at heading level 3 instead of at heading level 4. The Webhelp output isn't ideal, because all content under all heading 4s appears in a long scrolling list under each parent heading 3.  But that is what we had to do to get content that was usuable at all in WebHelp.

Tim

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

Here's a thought: Place conditional text (Online only) in your H3 headings. Your print output is exactly the same, and the online has the H1 that Rh so desperately wants/needs.