Phantom Empty Paragraphs Added to Topics and HTML

[jeremyk54602636]

Had a very strange problem start today. On the project I'm currently creating I have started to have empty paragraphs show up on both the visual and code view... and, they KEEP MULTIPLYING every time I change views from one to the other.  In the code, they look like this:

" <h2-blue class="Heading"><span style="line-height:1;"><span id="" style="color: rgb(0, 39, 118);line-height: 1">FTIS Menu</span></span></h2-blue>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p><span data-conref="assets/snippets/I_FTIS_Menu_S.hts"> </span><span style="line-height:1;"></span></p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p> </p>

  <p>

    <h2-blue class="Heading">Taxpayer Information</h2-blue>"

I mean there's nothing that I'm aware of that would cause this. I am inserting snippets after the headings, but there is nothing in those that would cause this, and in fact, there are places where there is only a heading and no snippet and it still inserts them.  At one point, the bottom of the page had over 3,000 empty paragraph tags.

Has anyone else run into this problem before?  I'm at wits end. I don't see ANYTHING in the code that would do this. I've removed the "<p> <br /> </p>" tags as I did see a random reference to that as a possible issue.

I'm also using a single style sheet and changed all the snippets to utilize the same style as the document to avoid a cascading issue.

HELP!

I'm using Robohelp version 2022.6.34 on a Windows 10 box.

[Peter Grainge]

The first two things I would do are:-

1. Reboot the machine.
2. Apply the supplied default.css to the topic and see if it still happens. If your CSS is named default.css, create a new project and lift a fresh unedited copy from there applying a new name before you copy it in.

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

I applied the default.css with a similar result. I'm not sure what you mean, exactly, with the second half of your suggestion.  Create a new project, copy the default.css to the old project assets folder?

Sorry, if that's a silly question, but I'm new to Robohelp and this is my first project. I love using it... except for this glitch...

[jeremyk54602636]

I should note that I rebooted the machine prior to posting here.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

To figure out if it's the project or the update, try it out in one of the sample projects - if it misbehaves in there, you might have discovered a bug. 

[Peter Grainge]

Very often people will amend default.css and then say they are using the default.css. Technically correct, they are, but it is not as supplied and could have been amended in a way that causes issues. I rather doubt this is a CSS issue but we have to rule it out.

Tackle this a different way.

1. Create a new project.
2. Copy the rogue topic into it using File Explorer. Do not import it.
3. Import the 

Does the problem still occur?

If it does, in code view amend

<h2-blue class="Heading"><span style="line-height:1;"><span id="" style="color: rgb(0, 39, 118);line-height: 1">

to 

<h2>

If the problem still occurs, share this demo project with me. See the Contact page on my site and send the project as instructed there. Do make sure you include a link to this thread and please do not email the project direct. I will take a look in the morning.

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

Hmmm.... okay. So copying the file into the new project still exhibits the problem. Amending the h2-blue to h2 resolves the problem.  What in this .css setting could be the cause of the problem -- or is the .css file simply corrupt and deleting and recreating the .css would resolve it.  I've attached a copy of the settings for that tag. I apologize it is a photo, but I work for a government agency and cannot send image files outside of the bldg (even if they are as inocuous as a .css entry).

First, thank you for all your help so far... we are definitely narrowing it down. But, what is your suggestion to fix the issue?

[Peter Grainge]

When you apply H2 to a paragraph, RoboHelp will simply write it as H2. All the extra stuff is inline styling that you have applied. Why are you not defining H2 in the CSS to get what you want rather than selecting the paragraph and applying the styling inline? 

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

I may have worked it out. I deleted the existing .css and created a new copy from the default.css file. I then recreated the h2-blue tag from the default h2 tag.   I'll see wehre that gets me over the next few hours.

[jeremyk54602636]

No... that unfortunately did not resolve the issue.

[Peter Grainge]

Line by line tell us what changes you are making to the CSS.

________________________________________________________

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

[Peter Grainge]

Change of plan. Make each of the changes one by one and test after each. That will tease out what is causing the problem.

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

Honestly, I've given up for now. I simply rebuilt the page in another blank Topic. I can't afford to spend too much time falling behind. As I have time, I may go back and attempt your suggestion(s).  Thank you for all your help and hand holding.

[Peter Grainge]

I'wondering where you are editing that style?

If you are selecting the heading in the topic, what you should be doing is editing the CSS. Double click it and then make your changes.

Come back when you are ready but I do think you must be doing something fundamentally wrong and I'm happy to help you track it down.

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

For the most part, that IS where I've been editing the .css. I haven't been double clicking the tag from the right hand panel, but I've been editing the .css from the assets list in the project.

But, like I said I do need to move on.  In the meantime, I do have what I hope is a quick/easy question for you. I notice on your site there are a number of h2 topics where you build a border around the text that extends the width of the page. For the life of me, I can not get the border/background to reach to container extents. I've tried setting the width to 100% and I've tried a fixed setting of 1000px in an effort to get it to expand. But, it still sizes to the text. I know I can cheat and build a 1 column/1 line table - but that's messy and extra html.

How do you get yours to size correctly?

[Peter Grainge]

Open the About RoboHelp sample project. You can copy the style from there. 🙂

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

It looks like the only way to accomplish it is to utilize one of the default "heading" tags. Trying to "copy" the h2 setting only creates a style and a style, apparently, cannot have a border or background that extends to the paragraph width. I had to adapt and overcome. I created a new tag for the items utilizing the h2 tag and then used the h2 tag to create the visual look I was after.

That is what worked for me.

[Peter Grainge]

You very much can have a border and background. You indicated you had seen that on my site and it is in the supplied About RoboHelp sample project. 

You also said you are new to RoboHelp so I think there is something you are not gettting quite right. If you open a CSS in the CSS editor and delete the whole H2 style and replace it with the code below, you will see a border and background. You can change the colours.

h2 {
color: rgb(93, 128, 159);
font-size: 14pt;
font-weight: bold;
margin-left: -0.5pt;
margin-top: 15pt;
margin-bottom: 10pt;
font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
background-color: rgb(220, 225, 240);
padding-top: 3px;
padding-bottom: 3px;
padding-left: 5px;
border: solid 2px rgb(140, 180, 225);
-moz-border-radius: 6px;
-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
border-radius: 6px;
}

If you are still stuck, would a brief web session help?

________________________________________________________

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

[jeremyk54602636]

No, you're absolutely right that I'm new, but I think we're talking the same thing. What I was suggesting is that it is impossible to "duplicate" the h2 tag, give it a new name and then use the settings you define above and have the border extend to the margins. I'm thinking it's an attribute baked into HTML5 and thus, cannot be duplicated by a tag with a different name.  Perhaps, I could test calling it h7 and see if that works. But calling the new, duplicated tag h2-blue does not work -- even with those attributes assigned. At least it didn't for me. Now I concede I did not enter the attibutes with the HTML editor, I used the interface. But, just the same it didn't function unless I edited the original h2 heading. It actually solves another problem (happy accident) by automatically populating the index on the right column with my major headings (bookmarks).

[jeremyk54602636]

And, thank you for offering a quick web session. It is appreciated. At some point, I'll likely look for training options in 2026, but right now I'm just trying to plow through the task I was hired for.

[Peter Grainge]

You can see above that I have created h2.blue and it works. I notice you are using h2-blue, hyphen rather than the dot. Try that.

The next thing to try is simple and quick. Hover over h2 so that you see the menu icon. Select duplicate in that.

Type blue in the class and RoboHelp will create the selector as h2.blue.

Go to code view and paste in the code I have given replacing whatever was there.

That should work.

________________________________________________________

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

[ajf86]

It seems prudent based on your h7 comment to make sure you know how CSS selectors work:

In a CSS file, h2.blue is a selector that will apply to the following element: <h2 class="blue">Your Heading</h2>