Transposed heading levels in Printed Output

[Phil_Wells]

I'm using RoboHelp for HTML 5.0.2.

When I generate printed output I've got Heading 1 as the Topic title and Heading 2 as a major sub-division in the topic.

The problem is that some of the Heading 1's and Heading 2's are being transposed in the output; i.e. I get some topic titles coming out as Heading 2's with one or more of the corresponding Heading 2's being changed to Heading 1's within the topic.

(Heading 1 and Heading 2 appear correct in the True Code - but I don't know much about this).

You get the same result if you use the existing CCS, Sytle mapping or a Word template on page 4 of the set up options for Printed Output.

Is there any way of stopping this happening?

[Peter Grainge]

Have you ticked the Maintain Heading Levels in Print Wizard (third page, bottom right I think)?

It's explained more in the Printed Documentation topic on my site.

[Phil_Wells]

Yes - I'm checking Maintain Heading Levels.

The problem is that Heading 1's are being swapped for Heading 2's and vice versa (i.e. Heading 2's are being changed to Heading 1's) on an apparently random basis.

It's not a major problem in that I can go into the printed version of the help file and swap them back manually, but it's time consuming.

[Peter Grainge]

Are you using the Style Mapping template?

If not, try that and post back the result. I'll look more closely then.

[Phil_Wells]

Hi Peter,

I still get the same problem with style mapping.

The problem seems to occur when there are instances of Heading 2 directly under Heading 1, i.e.

Topic Title.
Topic Subtitle.

On generating printed output they then come out as:

Heading 2.
Heading 1.

[Peter Grainge]

That does not give me the same result. I think we can eliminate the Word template as it is occurring with more than one.

Does the HTML look OK?

If it does, import a topic into a new project and generate a printed output to prove that it still has the same problem.

If it does, zip up and send it to me.

[Guest]

Did you generate the output as a single file or multiple files,ie section breaks in word?

Which version of Word are you using?

Are you using the Normal.dot template or one you created?

Try the following in word:
1. Click on the Paragraph mark on the toolbar.
2. Select all of the document except for the last paragraph marker (that is the one that contains all the information about the file Styles, formating, page layout etc)
3. Select copy.
4. Open a new document and paste

Does the problem still exist?

If you are using the normal.dot template

1. close Word
2. open the folder \documents and settings\yourfolder\Application Data\microsoft\templates
3. delete the normal.dot file. (word will create the normal.dot when opened.)
4 Restart Word and open the Document

Let me know how you get on.

Additional info. I have seen this type of problem described in the Word forums. This article may give some futher guidance.


Hope it helps,

Brian

[Phil_Wells]

Hi Brian/Peter,

Sorry - wasn't looking as closely at the problem as I should have.

What's happening is that the Heading 1's and Heading 2's for the Topics are coming out correctly.

I've had 'maintain heading levels' checked in the options for printed output, so RoboHelp's converting the TOC books to Heading 2's in the printed output. This is why I'm seeing Heading 2 above Heading 1 on some topics - they're the topics immediately below the TOC books in the hierarchy.

I think the answer may be to uncheck the 'maintain heading levels' option. This means:

TOC books will come out as Heading 1.
Topic headings will be converted from Heading 1's to Heading 2's.
Heading 2's will be converted to heading 3's.

I'll then have a consistant hierarchy of headings (but slightly different from the CCS in RoboHelp).

I can then modify the Word template I use (which is a custom one) to give me the appearance I want in Word.

I'll try this tomorrow when I get a few minutes.

[Peter Grainge]

Maintain Heading Levels is, I think, more about the content. Top level books then get Heading 1, the next level is Heading 2 so a nested book is Heading 2 but with Maintain Heading Levels on, the topic will be Heading 1. Got it! :-)

A few tests will make it clear now you are on top of it. Depending on how many books you have, naming them with Chapter / Section or similar can make it clearer.

Renaming is tricky. See my topic on that.

[Phil_Wells · Accepted solution]

OK, been doing a little experimenting, (based in part on Peter reminding me about the effect of 'Maintain Heading Levels').

I set up a simple hierarchy with one parent TOC book at Level 1, one child TOC book at Level 2 and one child (of a child)TOC Book at Level 3. Each level had an associated topic.

With Maintain heading Levels not checked the heading levels were as follows:

TOC Book 1: Heading 1
TOC Book 2: Heading 2
TOC book 3: Heading 3

Level 1 Topic: Heading 2
Level 2 Topic: Heading 3
Level 3 Topic: Heading 4

With Maintain heading Levels checked the heading levels were as follows:

TOC Book 1: Heading 1
TOC Book 2: Heading 2
TOC book 3: Heading 3

Level 1 Topic: Heading 1
Level 2 Topic: Heading 1
Level 3 Topic: Heading 1

Ideally, I want the print ouput to have all TOC books with the same header and all topics with the same header. I can then use a custom word template so that all TOC book names have the same appearance in Word, ditto all Topic names will have the same appearance in Word.

The way I found I could accomplish this is to go to the second screen of the Print SSL wizard and use the arrows to put all books in the hierarchy back to root level (level 1). All topics were then left at level 2. I left the Maintain Heading option unchecked.

The result was:

TOC Book 1: Heading 1
TOC Book 2: Heading 1
TOC book 3: Heading 1

Level 1 Topic: Heading 2
Level 2 Topic: Heading 2
Level 3 Topic: Heading 2

Similarly, when I put Heading 2's in the topics to indicate major sub divisions, they were all converted to Heading 3's in the Print output.

The other thing I did was to import the required custom Word template (screen 4 of the SSL wizard) and make sure that all my other styles were mapped across. For example I made sure that 'bold-blue' in the CCS for RoboHelp mapped to 'bold-blue' in the word template. If there's a style in the CCs (like 'bold-black') that's not in the template there's a tendency for it to be mapped to a heading level.

This method is not ideal because the TOC books are no longer in a hierarchy, but the heading styles remain consistent, giving a consistent appearance in the Print SSL output.

(My goal is to get printed output that looks good with a minimal need to tidy it up).

[Peter Grainge]

"The way I found I could accomplish this is to go to the second screen of the Print SSL wizard and use the arrows to put all books in the hierarchy back to root level (level 1). All topics were then left at level 2. I left the Maintain Heading option unchecked."

Sorry, I should have mentioned that is the trick. If you also add Chapter to the book name in the wizard, then it works if you leave your topics to come out with Heading 1.

You will get

Accountancy Chapter

followed by

First Topic

Even if that is Accountancy, that works as one is clearly the chapter name.

I think you can do it more easily editing the printdoclayout.xml file but take a backup first.

[Phil_Wells]

Thanks Peter,

The Printed output is looking pretty good now.

I think I'll duck out of the .xml file for the moment - my skills with RoboHelp don't extend to looking under the bonnet!

[ginafromtampa]

I'm having the same problem with my printed docs: The heading levels are showing up in the Word doc with a lower heading (which is a 3rd level book or chapter on top of a level 1 topic heading). This is being noticed by our customers now so it's a real issues. If it was a small project I would fix it manually in Word, but I've got over 400 topics in my RoboHelp X5 project.

Since it was recommended to set all the books (chapters) to the left in the TOC Composer in RoboHelp to have the printed docs print correctly, would it work to do that, but save the original .hhc TOC file and just replace it with the new .hhc just for the printed docs? I'm going to try this with a few chapters in a test project.

[Phil_Wells]

Hi Gina,

You should be able to fix it easily in RH.

Go to the printed documentation SSL and edit the print layout so that all books are at level 1 and all topics at level 2 - this can be a bit fiddley.

(Note that the layout is not updated when you add new topics, so you'll need to keep revising thre layout).

Make sure the maintain HTML Heading levels is not checked and generate the printed documentation.

You should find the heading levels will now be OK.

If you want to experiment a little you'll find you can bring over just some of the books/topics in your project into the print layout window. Try it printed output on a book and a few topics before you spend time on everything.

The layout is specific to printed output and will not affect your on-line TOC

[ginafromtampa]

Phil,

The printed docs looked great following your suggestions. But now when I try to generate again, RoboHelp has replaced my formatting on the 2nd screen of the print wizard back to the original. How do I get it to use the printlayout.xml I already set up that worked?

[Phil_Wells]

hi Gina,

When you generate, it should save the Printed documentation SSL that you set up.

If it's not saving, then there's some problem.

Try right clicking on the SSL and selecting the Save Duplicate Laytout option.

Go to the duplicate layout and right click, then select properties.

You should now be able to set up and save the properties of this duplicate SSL.

After confirming the properties have been saved OK, you should be able to generate using it.

You shouldn't need to go to the xml file - RoboHelp should do all that automatically.

(Print works a little differently from the way on-line does. You can set it up to print out parts of the document using a variety of different Print SSL's. Some sections of my help files are worked example for our customers, so i print out just those sections for training material).

[ginafromtampa]

Peter,

Can I rename the printdoclayout(8).xml that was just generated that worked from Phil's instructions to move all the books to the left in the Print Document Content dialog (Chapter Layout)? His suggestion worked and I am SO HAPPY!!!!! Now can I reuse that layout or do I have to move the chapters over every time I generate?

[Peter Grainge]

Gina

Taking a few days out, hence not replying earlier. Not ignoring you. Think all has been answered.

[ginafromtampa]

It works great! The printed docs headings are finally correct. Helpful hint: on the Print Document Content dialog, start at the bottom to move the topics and chapters over to the left. If you start at the top, whatever you move gets bounced to the bottom. I have over 400 topics, so it's a pain to move them where they need to go when they go to the bottom. Starting at the bottom keeps them in order.

[Phil_Wells]

Hi Gina,

Glad it worked.

One final point to watch - if you add new topics to your help file, they will not automatically appear in the printed output. You'll need to add them manually in the SSL print dialogue. Topics in (or not in) your help file are colour coded, so you'll be able to see what's included and what's not.

If you're going to add new topics, I'd suggest duplicating the layout first, cos it you make a mistake, you've still got the original layout to fall back on.