Ghost Margins

[Guest]

Hi Forum,

I have been using RoboHelp 7, mainly in the Design mode, for about 2 years now and every so often the program decides to insert a 40px margin at random, particularly when using the pre-set bullets within a manually typed document. It is more of a nuscense than anything else but I figured I would post this out to you all to see if anyone has any suggestions as to why this occurs or how to prevent this? For example...

Say I type the following in design mode:

RoboHelp is great because:

• It takes the guess work out of HTML coding.
• It does alot of the leg work for you.

But when I generate and publish the project the typed content in design mode appears as follows:

RoboHelp is great because:

•        It takes the guess work out of HTML coding.
• It does alot of the leg work for you.

Then when I look in RoboHelp at the HTML coding I notice that there is a 40px margin inserted within the <span> range around "It takes the guess work out of HTML coding" but I did not indent or tab when keying the text within design mode. In the example above, the HTML coding would look something like the following where RoboHelp inserts the Margin-left: command.

<span style="margin-left: 40px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;">It takes the guess work out of HTML coding.</span>

Thanks,

Dan

[Captiv8r]

Hi Dan

See if the video linked below helps to explain how it happens.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Guest]

Thanks Rick,

This does explain a little more about why this is happening and the solution is what I have been doing all along, I was just hoping that there was an identified fix to actually stopping RoboHelp from inserting these "Phantom Spans."

Thanks again,

Dan

[Captiv8r]

Hi Dan

Well, I'd have to say that the "fix" (if you will) is to avoid dragging that left margin on your own! Use CSS instead to control the left margin.

The thing is, RoboHelp is very flexible and allows you to do all sorts of things while you use it. My guess is that if the development team "fixed" things by disallowing us to adjust the left margin manually, hordes of users would begin crying foul! So it's a trade off.

My goal with the video was to show you how and why the SPAN tags were being created. For my own purposes, knowing exactly why something is happening goes a long way toward helping me to understand the process and adapt my work habits to be more efficient.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[Guest]

I guess the hang up then is that we are not using the slide ruler to change the margins within RoboHelp manually, rather we are using the pre-set Bullets and Indentation options from the Formatting toolbar and RoboHelp is inserting the span commands on it's own from there. Our CSS is defaulted to 0 for the left margin and manually removing the span command is not much of an issue for me as I understand HTML coding, this was more for my coworker who strictly utilizes the design mode in RH and is not fluent in HTML. I have shown him how to remove this "Phantom Span" prior to me posting this message although he forgot how to do it and was asking me again yesterday after he just deleted the bulleted list he inserted into his project within the design mode and re-typed it manually about 4x's before RoboHelp finally conceded and removed the span on its own and then he asked me about it.

Thanks again for all your help!

[Captiv8r · Accepted solution]

Hello again

That one is odd then. I've been using RoboHelp for 20 years. The only time I've ever known it to behave as I demonstrated in the video is when I manually made an adjustment by dragging that little ruler gizmo, then creating a new line (with the span) and afterward making the line part of something else. The thing is, I believe the tag is added at the time it has been dragged. And even if you drag it back I believe the tag remains. So it's possible that at some point it got dragged and maybe put back.

Your image also seems to infer that this was the case. My reason for saying that is because only that first bullet is affected.

So while it may seem "random", there is definitely a logic to it. Albeit a disjointed one. LOL

One other thing. This may save you some time and hair tearing. When you delete the SPAN tag, all you have to do is delete the opening tag with the left margin info. Don't worry about locating and removing the closing tag. By deleting only the opening tag RoboHelp will later sense the closing tag is an orphan and will remove it for you.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks