Glossary Hotspot results in blank lines inserted into code in RH2020

[Julie Marie R.]

Hello! First post here. I'm having a problem in RH2020 where after running the glossary hotspot tool, blank lines are inserted into any file it touches. I thought maybe it was an issue with my project, so I tried it in the CompassTravel sample project and am getting the same result, as is seen in the screenshot below. I think Friday was the first time I'd ever used the hotspot, so I have no idea if this a brand-new problem or an older one. I've spent several hours troubleshooting, including uninstalling and reinstalling RH and making sure the update is current (2020.8.34). The blank lines are showing up in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, and Notepad++, but don't appear in the source view in RH.

I guess the blank lines aren't technically breaking anything, but I find it much easier to navigate files in the source code in VSC rather than using the RoboHelp UI or source, and I can't handle how stretched out it is!

I've been working on this project for over a month now and was about to get it into review with my team, so I'm really hoping someone has a fix (besides going through and deleting every extra line). Thanks in advance.

[Peter Grainge]

I can see the blank lines in your screenshots, seemingly more in the header than the body but have you tested what happens if you remove them? I#m wondering if it will have unexpected and undesirable results in RoboHelp.

I am assuming they don't affect the output as you haven't commented on that.

It's not something I have seen reported here but most people will be using author view and source view in RoboHelp.

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My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[Amebr]

Robohelp has always fiddled with the code, although it seems less in the New UI versions. It also has not always displayed the actual code in the html file (one example in classic was "fudging" vlink and alink properties in the body tag to look like a <style></style> section). So I'm not surprised if no changes display in the RH New UI code view.

Sometimes with New UI I have noticed that sometimes the display seems to get "stuck" on a historical view of the content. In this case closing and reopening RH has fixed it. So perhaps try that to see if it makes any difference. I think also Peter has sometimes suggested deleting the .rh file, but I haven't used New UI enough to know if that would help and/or what else is affected by deleting that folder.

I suspect, though, it will be a case of living with it, or manually deleting the blank rows.

[Peter Grainge]

Deleting the .rh folder will not help with this issue.

I think that fiddling with the code now only occurs if the user writes something that does not comply with HTML5 standards.

You could try updating to 2022 as that is covered by your subscription. I doubt it will help but it's worth a try.

If you do decide to remove the lines manually, try one topic first to ensure there are no unwanted results. Also close and reopen the topic to make sure RoboHelp doesn't rewrite it.

Personally I would leave well enough alone. It's working.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.