How to fix styles in RoboHelp 8

[Guest]

I have upgraded to RoboHelp 8. After many other problems, now the styles are all fouled up. When I try to select a disc in the autonumbering list for a paragraph style, the text shows up with a number in front. Or when I try to apply a circle, no circle appears. When I move the text over using the indent button, the text randomly becomes bold. Indent distances that I set in points show up later in inches. When I apply the Normal style to a bullet style, the bullet does not disappear.

In short, nothing works. Nothing stays as I set it. Nothing moves or aligns the way I try to align it. My CSS worked previously through several RoboHelp versions, but it is not working at all with this one. My HTML skills are not good enough to bypass the UI and make all changes in the html directly.

Anybody have any ideas as to what is going on?

John

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

Your problem is caused because RoboHelp 8 uses XHTML instead of HTML. XHTML is a stricter than HTML and several 'hacks' that worked in previous RH versions, will no longer work.

Setting the list style trough a paragraph style will no longer work. Not in any way. We've had lots of posts concerning this problem, please search the forum. Read the other posts, and please post back with specific questions, so we can help you.

What do you mean saying that the indent distances show up in inches? In your CSS, WYSIWYG, HTML code?

How do you move or align text and objects? Do you use CSS, or do you rely on inline styling?

Greet,

Willam

This e-mail is personal. For our full disclaimer, please visit www.centric.eu/disclaimer.

[Guest]

I have time now to try to work on this.

I created a new project to try to use RoboHelp 8 styles dialog box to create a new set of styles.

Created a basic bullet style as a list style.

However, when I selected text in the default new topic and clicked the new bullet style, a bullet was added to the text, but the selection square in the Styles and Formatting pane immediately shifted to the (none) style. If I select the text and apply the normal style, the font changes, but the bullet does not disappear (i.e. the text does not actually change back to Normal. The only way to change it back is to click the "3 bullets" icon on the toolbar). Now, if I try to apply any other style, such as a heading style, again the font changes and the bullet remains. Then if I apply my list bullet style, the selection rectangle in the Styles and Formatting pane shifts back to the previously applied style.

I am only mentioning this first of many apparent bugs in the list styles of Robo 8 because in other posts, the moderators have asked for one problem at a time. I am expecting to enter many of these single issue posts.

[Guest]

Here is what appears to be a related problem, although my new list style "ListBullet" appears in the Styles dialog box and in the Styles and Formatting pane, it is not listed in the Apply Styles drop-down on the Formatting toolbar.

[Peter Grainge]

The answer to your other post about lists includes a link to my RoboHelp Tour. That explains the fact that the style changes to None.

There is a learning curve with lists in RoboHelp 8 because of the introduction of XHTML that was demanded by some users.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Oh man, now I am really confused. You say on your RoboHelp Tour that Robo works the way Dreamweaver works, that after you finish a list, you can then apply the Normal style or YOurStyle to it. I thought that was what we just got rid of, having both a list style and a paragraph style. I thought that these list styles were supposed to be the only style applied. If I made "YourStyle" a paragraph style named "Bullet" I would be right back where I started from.

Add to that that now my bullets are off the page to the left in the design editor, they don't show up at all in the page displayed by the view eyeglasses icon, and they are way too far indented in the generated webhelp.

That has never happened before. Whateve trouble I had in setting things up, at least it always looked the same in design editor and in generated help.

John

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

RH8 is designed so that lists should be entirely defined by the LI tag. That does not mean you cannot apply both a LI tag and a P tag. What needs to be understood is that in earlier versions you could define the bullets and numbers in the P tag, now that part of the style must be via the LI tag.

Let's say you want square bullets and instead of your normal text style you want a different font style and font colour.

The LI tag must define the bullet as in say round or square, the LI tag may also define the text as in Verdana 10 point and blue. Alternatively you could set the font style and colour by applying a paragraph style that gives you what you want.

• The advantage of doing it all via the LI tag is that you get what you want as soon as you apply the list style.
• The disadvantage is if you produce printed documentation and you use a Word template. You cannot map list styles so what you see in the printed document will not be as in the online help.

Using a paragraph style to define parts of the appearance can also be an advantage if you want lists to be the same in terms of the bullets or numbers but want some to have say blue text and some green. There you would apply the list style and then the appropriate paragraph style. What you can no longer do is define the bullet or number via the <P> tag.

The indent icon overrides what you set via the styles.That seems to be the same question as in your other post so please add an answer there for the benefit of anyone else finding that thread.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

OK, this is great. This is what I needed to understand at first. I didn't need to remove the p tag, just move the "bulleted" part of it to the list class tag, esp since I do need to produce printed docs.

OK, I think I understand what's going on now...mostly.

Thanks again,

John