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Need CSS Help

New Here ,
Jan 25, 2017 Jan 25, 2017

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I imported a Word doc into RoboHelp. The Word doc had its own style sheet, which was imported as well, but I created my own style sheet for the Help project and applied it to all topics.

I'm having two problems with my CSS:

  1. Having added a new style to my custom style sheet and applied the new style to a sentence or image, when I go back to see if the correct style is highlighted in the Style pod, it's not. It has always defaulted back to either "Normal" or "None."
  2. I created a style for a numbered list and a bulleted list, but although the style is set up to have little spacing between each number or bullet, the list always ends up with 14pt spacing. When I right-click on the text and look at the paragraph settings, I see that the Before: setting is 14pt. My style is not set up that way, so it seems that this other setting is overriding my style.

Many thanks for your help,

Maura

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Feb 02, 2017 Feb 02, 2017

Amber is correct that you don't have to select Normal but there is a reason for doing so. If you don't the browser used may have a different default font to the one you use for body text. What the user would then see is say Verdana 10pt if that is what you have chosen for your Normal paragraphs and the lists would be defined by their browser default, which could be Times Roman 12 point.

Hence in my work, when I use the list icon, I also select Normal to avoid that.

Hope we have resolved your issue

...

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Community Expert ,
Jan 25, 2017 Jan 25, 2017

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Which version of RoboHelp are you using and are all the patches applied?

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

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New Here ,
Jan 26, 2017 Jan 26, 2017

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I am using RoboHelp 2015, which we just purchased in December 2016. I was unaware that there are patches for it.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 26, 2017 Jan 26, 2017

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What is happening is that when you import, RoboHelp creates a separate CSS for the topics created from the import. How to deal with that is described on my site. Allowing RoboHelp to link to your own CSS as part of the import is something I have been campaigning for. I thought I recently saw something about that being fixed but I cannot locate it now. That is something I am checking out but if there had been a change, it would be version specific.

You may have bought RoboHelp 2015 in December but once released the download stays the same and does not include any patches. You need to apply them for other reasons rather than this issue.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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New Here ,
Jan 26, 2017 Jan 26, 2017

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Thank you, Peter. I will refer to your site's instructions for dealing with that. I did notice that RoboHelp created a CSS containing the styles from the imported Word doc, so I just created my own CSS. Obviously RoboHelp doesn't want to deal with the one I created.

Thanks again.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 26, 2017 Jan 26, 2017

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Hi there

Another thing to consider and for us to know is where you are seeing this. Note that it's likely you will see different representation of things in the RoboHelp editor VS the RoboHelp Preview window. And again, differences between what you see in the RoboHelp Preview window and the Browser. And lastly, as we all know, not only different browsers, but different versions of the same browser can present things differently.

Cheers... Rick

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Community Expert ,
Jan 26, 2017 Jan 26, 2017

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A couple of other things.

Check that there isn't a stylesheet in each topic between <style> tags. Historically an override of the hyperlink colours is placed here, and it's a pain.

Also, a whole bunch of inline formatting is usually included as well, so you may need to run through and replace a bunch of stuff in the code.

For example:

<p style="text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span

  style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;</span></span>&#160;Contact

record</p>

(I'm assuming this still happens in RH2015. )

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New Here ,
Jan 31, 2017 Jan 31, 2017

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Thank you, Peter and Rick, for all of your help. I finally realized I'd missed the tutorial on importing a Word doc that is on Peter's site. I went back to square one and cleaned up my Word doc, which had tons of unused styles, and followed Peter's instructions. I created a basic style sheet like Peter's sample one. Things seem to be working well now.

I do have a question for you, Peter. During the mapping, you advise to map all bulleted and numbered lists to normal, which I did. Now in RoboHelp, those lists from Word show as the style "normal." As I create new content and want to create a bulleted or numbered list, there is not a style for either one of those showing up in the Styles and Formatting Pod. I want to be able to highlight the text and click on a style for bullets or numbers. How do I handle this?

Thank you,

Maura

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Community Expert ,
Jan 31, 2017 Jan 31, 2017

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I think you can just click the number or bullet icon in the toolbar to turn your selected text into a list. Don't worry, this won't* apply inline styling, it just applies the html ol/ul/li tags to turn your text into a list.

You don't really need to select a separate style (e.g. Normal) for the list, but you can if you want to. (Basically if you select Normal, it adds a p tag inside each li tag.)

If that looks fine, carry on, otherwise you can always post back with questions on how to customise the look and feel of your lists.

* well technically, in RH11 at least, it does add the type of number or bullet inline, such as disc or square, or decimal or roman numeral, etc, which is annoying but fairly minor and nothing you can do about it unless you want to manually code your lists.

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Community Expert ,
Feb 02, 2017 Feb 02, 2017

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Amber is correct that you don't have to select Normal but there is a reason for doing so. If you don't the browser used may have a different default font to the one you use for body text. What the user would then see is say Verdana 10pt if that is what you have chosen for your Normal paragraphs and the lists would be defined by their browser default, which could be Times Roman 12 point.

Hence in my work, when I use the list icon, I also select Normal to avoid that.

Hope we have resolved your issue.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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New Here ,
Feb 02, 2017 Feb 02, 2017

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LATEST

Yes, you have all helped me resolve my issues. Thanks again Peter, Rick, and Amber!

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New Here ,
Jan 27, 2017 Jan 27, 2017

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Peter,

I applied all patches, however the very first patch (AdobeRoboHelp_12_0_1_upd) failed repeatedly and said to refer to the error log, which then was apparently missing. All other patches installed correctly.

I looked at your site re: importing a Word doc and using my own CSS, but I'm still confused. Please forgive such "basic" questions, but I am new to RH.

Here are the style sheets I see after importing a Word doc with my questions on what to do with them.

a. default.css - this has some headings, and a few other styles. I understand that we can use this instead of creating our own, but we one modify this and add styles to it?

b. the css named for the imported Word doc - shoudl I keep this so that when I generate a print doc, I can tell it to use this style sheet?

c. RHStyleMapping.css - no idea what to do with this

d. the style sheet I created which I referred to in my original post (the one that isn't working)

Based on your Web site's instructions, it appears that if we use our own css, we need to ensure the style names match what is in the imported Word doc css AND the default.css? Is this correct?

Again, sorry for all of the newbie questions. Maybe they aren't appropriate in this thread; if not, let me know and I'll start a new discussion.

Thanks very much.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 27, 2017 Jan 27, 2017

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Hi there

I'm not sure if Peter is busy at the moment. Hopefully he won't mind my offering my own observations here.

a. default.css - this has some headings, and a few other styles. I understand that we can use this instead of creating our own, but we one modify this and add styles to it?

I believe when you create a project you get a "default.css" as part of the basic file set. The thought is that you then modify that css to become what you want or need.

b. the css named for the imported Word doc - shoudl I keep this so that when I generate a print doc, I can tell it to use this style sheet?

I've always ignored these CSS files. After importing from Word, I just apply my own desired CSS and promptly ignored the CSS that is created for each Word document. And as related specifically to the last part of your statement: should I keep this so that when I generate a print doc, I can tell it to use this style sheet?

I believe when you create printed docs, IF you are using a CSS and not the Word template, you can only choose ONE CSS file. So if you import perhaps 30 Word documents, you will end up with 30 different CSS files as a result. In that case, will the REAL CSS please stand up?

c. RHStyleMapping.css - no idea what to do with this

d. the style sheet I created which I referred to in my original post (the one that isn't working)

I'll defer to Peter or another user to offer advice on the last two. Like the other things, I've personally always ignored the RHStyleMapping.css.

Cheers... Rick

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New Here ,
Jan 27, 2017 Jan 27, 2017

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Thanks very much, Rick. I think perhaps the whole issue I'm encountering could be that I didn't map Word styles to RoboHelp styles when I imported my Word doc AND instead of using default.css, I created a new stylesheet.

So - given that, is there a way to map styles AFTER the import? And maybe I could simply "move over" my styles from my own style sheet to the default.css. If I map, it should all work, right? I just don't see how to do the mapping after import.

Thanks again for your answers, and I appreciate your patience.

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Community Expert ,
Jan 27, 2017 Jan 27, 2017

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Rick's approach is fine if the style names in his CSS match the Word names. If not RoboHelp just matches what it can and any styles not matched get set to None. You then have to go through all the topics looking for paragraphs set to None and apply a style. That is a most enjoyable task, not. Hence best to import into a blank project as I suggest, apply your own CSS and see what it looks like. Do your cleaning up there and then import those topics into your live project.

As for keeping the CSS RoboHelp created, I wouldn't bother. Two reasons, I prefer to output to a Word template that I have created with the right style names that match my CSS. It takes some time but it's a once only task. That way I can map the styles but the appearance will be different as Heading 1 for example will be say Verdana Bold Blue 18 point online but perhaps be Black and 16 point in print. You could create a variant of your CSS but generally I find the template method better. The other reason is that after cleaning up during the import, the import CSS will no longer map because you have applied styles in RoboHelp.


See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

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