TCS3: Autofit tables to content

[pr_csc]

Hi,

I'm an occasional user of Framemaker  10 and RoboHelp 9, which I use to generate AirHelp.
In the Framemaker source documents  I have  a large number of 'Note:' and 'Caution:' paragraphs that I want to stand out from the rest of the text.

I investigated doing this using the Framemaker reference pages to insert a suitable graphic in front of each Note or Caution paragraph; this works fine in Framemaker, but is then no good in RoboHelp (as importing from reference pages is not supported).

I don't want to get involved in writing scripts as I feel this would be beyond my level of experience (which is very basic!) so I thought the best way to proceed would be to put all the relevant paragraphs into single row tables instead - the graphic would be in a fixed width column and the text in a second column that autofits to the width of the AirHelp window. 

The problem that I'm struggling to resolve is: once the FrameMaker files are imported into RoboHelp, the tables are always a fixed width - how can I make them autofit without having to select each one individually and click Table > Autofit > Autofit to Window?

I guess I'm missing something simple, but I can't figure it out.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Can you show us an example of what’s not working? Use the camera icon in the web interface to add screenshots.

[pr_csc]

As a test I created several tables in FrameMaker and then linked it to RoboHelp - The RoboHelp WebHelp output is shown below:

When the browser window is resized, as shown below, the table text does not wrap:

In RoboHelp I could select each table individually and choose Table > AutoFit > AutoFit to Contents but this would be impractical as there are many instances, plus I would need to repeat the process each time the Framemaker document is updated.

Thanks

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

2 questions – (1) what happens when you create HTML5 output? Does it resize then? And (2) how are your Conversion Settings mapping the table in FM to a RH table style?

[pr_csc]

1. The same thing happens when I create HTML Help (i.e. it does not resize).

2. In FrameMaker the tables have the Table Tag of 'Format B' and the text in the table has the CellBody Paragraph Tag. When I access the Project Settings in RoboHelp and edit the conversion settings, the mapping for this table is as shown below:

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

HTML help is a .chm in my books – I was talking about Multi-Screen HTML5 or Responsive HTML5 content depending on your RH version.

You may want to experiment with changing the mapping from “Source” to one of your “resizable” RH table styles and see how that behaves.

[pr_csc]

Success...

I did what you said and tried mapping to a RH table style & finally got it to work by:

1. In the css I added the following line into the definitition of the table being mapped to:

width: 100%  ! important ;

2. In the Framemaker document I fixed the widths of the two columns in the table to 2cm and 10cm respectively.

Thanks Jeff for your help

[Sreekanth_S]

Hi

I am facing a similar issue. When I added the width: 100% in the CSS it still doesn't autofit. Can you please share a screeshot of the relevant section in the CSS?

Sreekanth

[pr_csc]

Did you also include the "!" as below? (I don't actually know what function it serves though).

[Sreekanth_S]

Hi

Thanks a ton for that. I mistook "! important" in your reply was to highlight the code's importance and skipped that. I added that and it works perfectly now.

With my limited knowledge of CSS, I would not have figured out that adding !important will make a difference.

Sreekanth

[SharadaTV]

Srikanth,

I added that width to 100% and !important in the CSS file, but no luck. Robohelp does not consider this change and takes FM source table height and width.

How do I change it to autofit to window.

Thanks

Sharada

[Peter Grainge]

If you are generating a responsive layout output, I believe RoboHelp has an option "Convert absolute table size to relative table size". I wouldn't like to say that will fix it but it's worth a try.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge