Left Justify Wrapping Text Lines in Lists

[Douglas_Campbell]

I'm using RH9 on Windows XP, fully patched.

I'm having a problem finalizing a few tweaks with the formatting of lists imported from FM.It took me a while to get the lists from the FM source book to import correctly, but now I have it pretty clean, with the exception of when text in the lists wraps.

Currently, if there is a second line that wraps, it justifies with the list element (number, letter, bulelt, etc.) on the left. However, I would like it to justify itself on the left with the first sentence.

I've managed to fix this easily while authoring natively in RH by adjusting the multilevel list styles. But I'm unclear about how to do this with the style mapping from FM>RH.

I'm mapping the original FM style to a RH paragraph style and indicating in the mapping properties to "Convert Autonumber to RoboHelp List." I see the option to edit the list properties in the RH paragraph style I map to, but it doesn't go as deep in terms of options as the multilevel list style edit dialogue. I know you can associate the paragraph style with a multilevel list, but it was such a nightmare to get this working as it is, I'm remiss to do anything without some direction.

Thanks in advance,

Douglas

[Douglas_Campbell · Accepted solution]

Jumped the gun and should have followed my instincts with linking the paragraph style to a multilevel list style. This works.

[Guest]

Hi, how do you link a paragraph style to a multilevel list style in RH9?  The only options I am seeing are [Source] and Normal.  Are you using RH8?

Please explain what you mean by "I'm mapping the original FM style to a RH paragraph style and indicating in the mapping properties to "Convert Autonumber to RoboHelp List." I see the option to edit the list properties in the RH paragraph style I map to."

Thanks

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

It's below that section - there's a place to tell RH what to do with FM lists - I seem to remember (I don't have RH open right now) that you have 3 options - convert as text, convert to RH list, convert to html list.

[Guest]

Thanks Jeff, I'm not getting the results I want from those selections.  RoboHelp List actually removes my bullets entirely.  HTML list correctly formats the bullets but then places text 1 or 2 lines below instead of aligned with the bullet .  The only way I can get a bullet and text to align is by selecting Convert Autonumber to Text.  Using this selection, RH places a small square bullet, ignoring whatever I set in the CSS (eg. list-style-type: desc;).  The text wrap should be handled by list-style-position: inside; but RH is ignoring W3C conventions and using a default that is not configurable.  I understand RH is not W3C compliant so then what logic is RH using?  Regardless of what setting is selected for lists, RH overrides my custom style sheet settings.

There is no way to map a style to another style in RH9 as far as I can see. RH9 allows you to make style setting adjustments in the [Source] but those bullets do not format correctly either (formatting-->indents-->bulleted list icon/button).

I have checked my FrameMaker template source and don't see what could be contributing to the problem.  Those bullet styles are standard for FM, round and with the exact layout I want in my RH output.  RH seems to want to re-adjust that to its own default. 

Any insights would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You may have more luck controlling this by using a FM template that you run all the linked/imported FM files through - Matt Sullivan often recommends this approach - he's got a blog post kicking around on the roundpeg website that discusses using this method.

[Douglas_Campbell]

Map the FM style to the RH paragraph style that you create. Then create a multilevel list style. Go to the editing properties for this multilevel list and find Style/Paragraph Style in the dialogue box. Choose the new paragraph style you have created. The paragraph style is now associated with the multilevel list. In the Formatting area of the same dialogue box you can adjust indentation and space using the buttons for it.

[Guest]

Thanks for the feedback!  Matt's post is here:  http://blog.roundpeg.com/blog/controlling-robohelp-output-with-a-framemaker-template. This isn't resolved yet but thought I would add the link for reference.