Conditional text tags doing strange things - RoboHelp8 HTML

[wjou9]

Since upgrading to RoboHelp8 HTML I have had several issues appear over a period of time.

I have applied service patches 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 for two of the issues but am still having other issues appear.

Can anyone help me with conditional text tags that are behaving badly?

Background

I am having the issue in topics that already existed before the upgrade to RoboHelp8 from RoboHelp7 - both where text has already had a conditional text tag applied to it before the upgrade and where I have applied the conditional text tag after the upgrade.

The issue has occurred where one word in a paragraph of text has had a conditional text tag applied to it and also when a whole paragraph has had the conditional text tag applied to it.

I have found this issue to appear across several topics that have been created in earlier versions and opened into RoboHelp8 HTML.

The Issue...

Now to explain the actual issue to you... Make sure that you have understood the 'Background' section above...

The condtional tags have applied themselves to text else where e.g. continuing down the page.

In the screen shots below the first series are of the topic OK as they should be with four different conditions applied to them (light blue, green, pink, black), the second series is after a period of time when the topic has been opened again and the conditional text has gone wild and applied itself randomly - I might add here that the topic had been opened prior to this and been fine!

Series one - should look like

Series two - shouldn't look like

In this particular case it is the black conditional tag that has reaaplied itself, but it has been variations of the other conditionals also else where.

To resolve the issue (which may come back I might add) I am having to copy all text into Notepad, delete all text and apply the 'Normal' style to the topic and then re paste text in from Notepad.  This mostly works, but in somecases I will reopen the topic at a later date (after it has been ok when opened at other times) to find the crazy conditional again.

If that does not work I delete and rebuild the topic page.

Please help me!

wjou9

[Peter Grainge]

I don't know what to suggest other than the clean up you are running. The only thing I can come up with is to go to Tools > Options and run Update DHTML. Do this on a copy of the project in case it makes the problem worse rather than better.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[wjou9]

Thanks for your suggestion Peter.

I will try this the next time the issue with conditional text occurs, I'll let you know if it helps.

wjou9

[eeddings]

I had this problem on a fairly long topic myself.  Every time I went to the HTML tab in RH 8 and went back to the design tab, it'd mess up the build tags.  I got tired of retagging it over and over, that's for sure.  It always broke in the same place in the topic and after that spot all of the build tags were hosed.

I narrowed the problem down to an en-dash imported from Word that converted to an HTML symbol in the HTML code.  I'm not sure if that'll help, but once I got rid of all the en-dashes and em-dashes in the projects, I haven't seen it since.

[LAN_INTL]

RoboHelp HTML 8 w/upgrades 1&2

I have had the exact same problems with original topics as well as new topics. Conditions were carefully applied. Attempted to solve the problem by completely redoing the topic only to have the crazy conditions reappear upon reopening the project. Is anyone still experiencing this problem and has there ever been a solution that works? Em or en dashes have never been involved.

[Peter Grainge]

This problem hit more people in RoboHelp 9 and a fix was issued. See the Announcements at http://forums.adobe.com/community/robohelp/robohelp_html

I doubt that a fix will be issued for RoboHelp 8 so you either need to upgrade or see if avoiding multi-level lists will help.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[dawny1313]

What about those of us who *just* upgraded to Suite 2.5? As in, December? We begged for and finally got approval and the upgrade software and all of our writers got our machines upgraded about two seconds before Suite 3 rolled out the door, so "upgrade to 9.0" isn't an option.

For some of us who have angrily hard coded via Notepad and Word for <span><span><span><span>, and pasted code back in, or gotten fed up and REMOVED the CBTs, figuring, "It just isn't worth it," that's not very comforting.

Thanks,

Judy

Maryland

[SaundraLD-bWCCqx]

Hi Peter,

I don't see a "fix" listed on this link that you posted:

This problem hit more people in RoboHelp 9 and a fix was issued. See the Announcements at http://forums.adobe.com/community/robohelp/robohelp_html

Can you be more specific, please? We are having conditional text popping up all over the place in our topics, in places it was never intended or placed to begin with. I can't figure out why this is happening. Thank you.

Saundra

[SaundraLD-bWCCqx]

(and I am using RH9, part of the Tech Suite)

[Peter Grainge]

Look at the announcements, specifically number 6.

---

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[eeddings]

I am getting a broken link when I click the file link on Announcement #6.  Is anyone else?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Use http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html and grab the 9.0.1 update

[eeddings]

I appreciate the reply.  I already have 9.0.1 installed.  i thought I needed to download and replace a single file.  Thanks!