Nonbreaking spaces from FrameMaker are deleted

[marciamallow]

The FrameMaker 2020 files that I import into RoboHelp 2020 contain many non-breaking spaces. RoboHelp deletes them, so the words run together.

If there are any nonbreaking spaces, I can do a search-and-replace in FM before importing and replace them with regular spaces. But most of them are embedded in cross-references, so S&R in FM doesn't find them.

For example,  a cross-reference to "Figure 4" appears in RH as Figure4. Ack ptui!

The only solution I have found so far is to look line-by-line for these items in RH and fix them manually. (RH's S&R doesn't seem to find these either.)

1. Is the problem with nonbreaking spaces imported from FM a known issue? Or is this problem unique to my files?

2. If it is a known issue, what is the ETA for a fix?

3. In the meantime, are there any short-cuts to finding them in RH?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Are both products patched up to the latest versions? Frankly, I don't really use n-b spaces in my FM to RH project, so I've never noticed if this is an issue or not. Was it working ok for you in an earlier edition of FM/RH?

[marciamallow]

Hi, Jeff. Yes, both products are up to date. Our prior versions were FM 2015 and (I believe) RH 2015, where non-breaking spaces didn't cause problems. Nor did a lot of other things that have been problematic in the 2020 versions...

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Regarding FM2015 & RH version - they would have been off-synch - the FM version was always 1 higher than the RH one.
I think for your #1 & 2 you need to contact the RH folks - see https://helpx.adobe.com/contact/enterprise-support.other.html#robohelp for your support contact options.

For #3, I'd be looking at the HTML code view to see how RH is treating the nb spaces - that will give you a clue as to what to search on - there's probably some ALT-xxx or Unicode sequence for nb spaces that it's using.

[marciamallow]

Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate your trying to help.

Until last July, we had one employee who had RoboHelp and who created all our online help. He could have told you what version of RoboHelp he used. I know FM 2015 is right, because that's what's required by our Corporate standard. I have to convert our FM 2015 source files into FM 2020 before they can be imported into RH 2020.

Adobe support knows me well -- working with them, it took from August until late March to have a version of RH that would successfully import my FM files.

[Jeff_Coatsworth · Accepted solution]

Have you also tried Publishing direct from FM to HTML5? That may also be an option around this painpoint.

[marciamallow]

Hi Jeff. I never tried that, simply becacuse I didn't know it was an option. It appears to work. I will now need to send the results on to our development team, to make sure it links up with the software successfully.

And I'll be heading over to the FM forum to determine whether I can do some fine-tuning.

[marciamallow]

And here's an interesting postrscript to this issue: When I publish directly from FM to Responsive HTML5, the non-breaking spaces are also ignored. So the problem is either internal to FM rather than RH, or HTML5 just doesn't support non-breaking spaces.

Either way, I've spent far too much time messing with them. It's actually easier to convert the nb spaces to regular spaces in the xref variables in the final files, and proceed from there.