Random spaces

[bob2cam]

I'm publishing to WebHelp using RoboHelp for Word. I'm getting random spaces breaking up words throughout the manual. In other words the text looks like this...

This is a sa mple sentence.

Has anyone come across this before or know of a solution?

[RoboWizard]

Hi bob2cam

I never work using RoboHelp for Word. What I'm about to suggest would apply to my body of experience using RoboHelp HTML. However, it occurs to me that the same behavior could be observed from RoboHelp for Word.

If you look at the "TrueCode". The HTML code that is produced for your WebHelp pages, look carefully at the text where the odd spacing is occurring. You may notice a <span> tag. The tag may look similar to this: <span style="margin-left: 24px;">.

The fix, of course, is to delete the offending tag ( <span style="margin-left: 24px;"> ) as well as the closing ( </span> ) tag.

The cause? Well, in RoboHelp HTML it seems to occur when you indent some text, press Enter to create a new paragraph, then backspace to combine the two sentences.

Hopefully this helps... Rick

[bob2cam]

Thanks, but no such luck-
Here's what a section looks like in source view from web help...

<P>If a Term Sheet/Commitment Letter is produced for the credit facility, and the Borrower has signified its acceptance with all terms and conditions contained in the Term Sheet/Commitment Letter by affix ing the appropriate signatures. </P>

Notice the space in the word "affix ing".

The only way, so far... is to delete the word and then retype it...

[Guest · Accepted solution]

It's been a while since I used RH for Word, but I'm assuming that it still uses Word for a topic editor.

Have you looked at the "True Code" view from RH for Word? Have you gone into Tools > Options and made everything visible?

The reason I am asking is that this looks like it might be an optional hyphen that WebHelp is interpreting as a space. If it is, you're in luck - Word Replace can find special characters like optional hyphens and get rid of them.

And, of course, you'll want to turn off optional hyphens in your RH for Word source documents (I forget exactly where...probably Tools > Options again).

HTH,
Elisa

[Captiv8r]

Hi Elisa

You are kidding, right? I mean, with your comment:

It's been a while since I used RH for Word, but I'm assuming that it still uses Word for a topic editor.

LOL... Rick

[bob2cam]

Elisa,
That did the trick for 90% of them. I went back and looked at the original Word docs and each word originally had a hyphen.

Many thanks!