Styles, tables and margins

[twimom]

Our documentation has lots of step-by-step numbered (and sometimes bulleted) procedures as well as information organized in tables. We are using several styles throughout our webhelp project and for the most part the styles do what they are supposed to. However, in some cases a new paragraph inexplicably starts to the left of the margin. In tables, the margin disappears, pushing the text against the left border of the cell. With one heading style, the "next" paragraph style always starts to the left of the margin and the cursor is not even visible. In both cases, the correct style shows in the style box and the "fix" is to go and re-select and re-apply the (already selected) style. When reapplied, the margins return to normal.

So - we know how to deal with the problem, but it's annoying and we're not sure why we have the problem in the first place.

We also have a problem with numbered and bulleted lists that work fine in WebHelp but get all "wonky" when generating printed doc. I mention this just in case there's some overall "style" thing we're doing wrong....

Do you know:
Why we have this problem?
If there's a way to fix it globally without manually editing 400+ topics?

Thanks for any direction you're able to provide!

[kmaddox1]

I was having similar "wonky" problems with converting my styles for bulleted and numbered lists and indented paragraphs from RH to Word print docs. While it's certainly not an ideal solution, I ended up fixing the problem by deleting all my bulleted and numbered lists styles and just using the default lists/indents that are generated when you click the bullet /number/indent formatting icons in RH. It took a few hours to reformat all topics, but now my lists are completely stable in both print and online form and I'm a much happier camper. Also, it really helps if you are comfortable creating formatted lists right in HTML. With a little bit of knowledge of how to use <ul>, <li>, and <ol> tags (it's not hard), you can very quickly fix almost any bullet/number/indent problems from TrueCode view.

[MergeThis]

As Kathy mentioned, your best method is no styles, just the default toolbar buttons.

One important point to keep in mind: RH is really helpful (it thinks) when you try interrupting a list with some plain text. It says to itself: "My master obviously wants to end this list." and then afterwards "Oh, my master wants a new list." Just get comfortable going into the TrueCode and removing the ending and starting UL or OL tags, so that you end up with a single list, not many.


Good luck,
Leon

[MergeThis]

Oh, sorry, I forgot about your other style issues!

Cascading Style Sheets means:

Styles in an external style sheet (.css file)
are superceded by styles within your topic's HEAD section
which are superceded by styles applied to elements within your topic's content

Styles in RH are similar to styles in Word, in that they assume baseline formats from the style they were used to create them.

Styles applied to table content can override the table template that was used (RH default or your own).

If you check the TrueCode, I'm pretty sure you'll find some indents with negative numbers.


Good luck,
Leon