Lost formatting in build of CHM - 2019 Classic

[Ayrton_5]

Can somone tell me what are the common gotchas which might lead to the style font vanishing in building a CHM help file? Specifically, my google font is replaced with Times New Roman.

The font is on the build PC; I thought that was all that was needed for CHM builds. As it happens, the fonts are in the project anyway, because I have been doing some research into moving to a more modern output format. That looks like it's coming to nothing, for reasons outside of my control. One way or another I'd have thought Robohelp has what it needs to package the font properly.

This has worked before but doesn't now and I can't see why.

[Peter Grainge]

When you say this has worked before, do you mean with CHMs or other outputs?

I'm sure you know that the CHM compiler is a Microsoft product. It hasn't been updated since 2004 so Google fonts would not have been a feature. Adobe have to use the compiler as is.

I had always thought fonts have to be on the end users machine but if you have made it work with CHMs clearly that's not the case. I have seen people refer to adding the font file to baggage but I can't see how that helps as it is still not on the user's PC. Maybe Microsoft had some way of addressing that.

Have you got an old project where it did work that can give some clues?

Sorry I can't be more helpful. Do update the thread if you manage to resolve it.

[Ayrton_5]

Thanks Peter, I do have a copy of our source files from the last release, which did work. If you can tell me what files to look in, I will see if I can find any differences?

[Peter Grainge]

I don't know where to look as I don't know how you managed it. 🙂

Start by looking for a baggage file with a font, then look in the topic HTML and CSS.

[Amebr]

On a competing product forum (coughflarecough) I saw instructions suggesting you add the font as a baggage file, then define an @font-face reference in your css, using a relative path from the css to the location of the baggage font file. Can't vouch for it working, but that might help you work out where to look in your old working project.

[Peter Grainge]

Nice one Amber. I knew I had heard of the idea but not how to implement it. Ayrton - I suspect you know how to use @font-face but if not this topic covers setting it up in RoboHelp.

http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/fonts/fonts.htm

[Ayrton_5]

Thanks both for your input. It looks like there is not an answer here but I will wrap it up for posterity. I hate it when other people leave threads hanging 😉

I've been experimenting for quite some time, on and off as time allows, with moving from CHM to some sort of web-based help. This has led me to add google fonts as baggage, add @fontface clauses, etc. which also - somehow - made these fonts available to CHM output, which is still our current output. There are a couple of reasons beyond my control which means the web-based ideas are now dead. Google fonts did work in our CHM, I can see this in the live release, and I have a backup of the source from that time.

I had a lot of problems with the CHM build for that last release which I needed Peter's help with - the build kept stalling on compile. Peter suggested making a new SSL which resolved the problem. Immediately after the release I got moved from the 2015 version of Robohelp to the 2019. 

So you can see there is so much going on here that it is practically impossible to run 'controlled experiments' to eliminate factors. It is possible, judging from what Peter says, that I managed to get google into my CHM by some sort of loophole in 2015 that isn't there in 2019. With a release to get out I don't have the time to invest in recreating this so I'm just going to have to go back to Verdana or similar and do without a degree of corporate branding. This is a shame but I have to be pragmatic.

Thanks again for your help with this matter.

[Peter Grainge]

I have tried to make it work in 2019 Classic but no joy so far.