Zero-width space becomes NegativeMediumSpace after RH upgrades

[max_drawdown]

See the attached "before-the-after" screenshot.

After a couple of RH upgrades, now on RH 2020.8.34, the compiled help no longer transforms zero-width space characters as expected.

The zero-width-space (ZWS) characters now appear as &NegativeMediumSpace in the output.

The purpose of the ZWS is to break long URLs at more readable places when the user narrows the help viewer. This technique worked perfectly a couple of releases ago and I want it to work now as well. 

I'm rather new to RH.

What shall I do?

[Peter Grainge]

I have edited your post to include the screenshot. Please use the photo icon to insert images within the post. Seeing an image inline with the text makes it easier for anyone answering or viewing the post.

I'm a long time user of RoboHelp and have never seen any post about negative spacing. Is this since you upgraded from Classic to the New UI? The latter applies strict HTML5 and CSS3 rules. I'm guessing this is not compliant.

It looks as if this is not a link, just a long string. I think what you need is a non-breaking space. 

HTML Space – How to Add a Non-breaking Space with the   Character Entity (freecodecamp.org)

________________________________________________________

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

[max_drawdown]

@Peter Grainge: Thanks!

(I'm also new to this forum, including the tool set. Tried to edit but didn't notice a way to do so.)
The symptom appeared after a couple of upgrades from Classic. Yesterday I noticed that my company now offers RH2022, so I upgraded to it. The symptom persists.
For the use case, I really wanted (and, in earlier RH version, really got) a zero-width space, not a NBSP. An NBSP appears as a space, and ZWSP doesn't appear.

You might be right re: non-compliance. Now that I look at this Wikipedia article about ZWSP, I probably need to experiment with other ideas.

Best regards,

[Peter Grainge]

As a new user you cannot edit your posts. Either add a further post to correct or add a post asking a moderator to make an amendment.

________________________________________________________

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

[Amebr]

The entity references are valid html. A quick test in RH2022 seemed to show that the first numeric code version of the zwsp listed in the wikipedia article worked in both the RH editor and in Frameless output. Can you try replacing the incorrect text in one example with the correct entity code, using the code editor view, and see if that works? If it does, you should be able to find and replace in the code to quicly update all your topics.

[Amebr]

Or, I think you could find and replace in code with <wbr /> although I haven't tested that (note the space and forward slash inside the tag)