I did a little bit more digging into this issue, and I
discovered some odd things.
First, when JavaHelp is compiled, a pared-down version of my
CSS is created (comments stripped out, etc).
Curiously, all of my class names have been lowercased (I tend
to use camelCase, e.g. FieldDesc). This should not matter because
the W3C recommendation for CSS1 states that "...All CSS style
sheets are case-insensitive, except for parts that are not under
the control of CSS. I.e., in CSS1, font family names and URLs can
be case-sensitive."
However, if I open my original HTML document (i.e. not one of
the copies created during the JH compilation) and change a SINGLE
class value to lowercase and then recompile, ALL paragraphs that
use class selectors are then formatted correctly in JavaHelp.
Unfortunately, the fix only applies when classes are used in
"paragraphs" (by paragraph, I mean h1-h6 and p). Classes referenced
within span tags remain unformatted.
(This behavior does not seem to be controlled via the "Use
Lowercase File Names" parameter in the JavaHelp SSL project
properties dialog.)
So it seems a partial, inconsistent workaround is available,
but the larger issue would appear to be that JavaHelp does not
support CSS1 according to the W3C recommendation. I don't see this
as a RoboHelp issue, but as a Sun/JH issue.