"Default paragraph font" does not work

[EileenPalsson]

Hi,

I'm having trouble removing inline formatting using RoboHelp X5. From RoboHelp Help:

Removing inline styles from text
When you remove an inline style, only the block of text with the formatting is affected. Any style applied to the text is retained.
To remove an inline style:
In the WYSIWYG Editor, select the block of text with the inline style.
On the toolbar, click the arrow next to the styles box .
Select Default paragraph font. The inline formatting is removed while retaining any style applied to the text.

This doesn't work. The code, both before and after:
<h1 style="font-weight: bold;"><b><font style="font-weight: bold;">My topic title</font></b></h1>

We got loads and loads of inline formatting when we converted a WinHelp project to HTML Help, so I need to remove inline formatting from basically every line in the project. :-(

Grateful for any suggestions on how to do this quickly and easily!
/Eileen

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Eileen. If your inline syntax follows a similar pattern throughout I'd say the best way to tackle this would be use a find and replace tool such as FAR or bkReplaceM. Both do an excellent job - I prefer FAR but that's only my opinion. Just analyse the required changes and plan then carefully. Take a backup of your project and away you go. Best of luck.

[MergeThis]

There's no quick and easy method that I know of. Although I'm a big fan of the FAR utility, trying to remove opening and closing tags without being sure of the content between them might be problematic, if not downright impossible.

An alternative might be what I'll call the "slash-and-burn" method:

1. In RH WYSIWYG mode select and cut the entire topic (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X).
2. Paste the content into Notepad ( not MS Word), select all and copy (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C).
3. In RH WYSIWYG mode paste the content from step 2 (Ctrl+V).
4. Apply your styles.

A caveat: don't use styles for bullet/number lists, especially if you'll be producing Printed Doc output at some point. Rh works best if you just select the list items and click the list icons in the RH toolbar.

I know this method might seem daunting, but I've been there, done that. Give yourself a few days, put your head down, and just do it.


Good luck,
Leon

[EileenPalsson]

Thank you for the tips, Colum. I finally got around to trying both FAR and BKReplaceEm today. Unfortunately, I could not get them to replace long tags such as:

<p style="text-align: left;" align=left><b><font style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Arial; font-weight: bold;" size=2 face=Arial>

with <h2>. I guess there is too much white space in RoboHelp's code. WAH!

I guess I'm going to be forced to do it manually, as Leon suggested. Except I will use ClipStrip instead of the cut/paste method!

/Eileen