HTML tag conversion/correction

[Nick46]

Using RoboHelp 7 (which I just purchased), I went through a semi-tutorial by Jen deHaan, titled Creating and Customizing Online Documentation with RoboHelp. The product has changed significantly since the last time I used it so I wanted to refresh my memory on how to use RoboHelp. Grey matter combined with grey hairs and all that other mystical stuff.

In doing so, I came upon some peculiarities—it could be I simply do not quite understand.

I was trying to create a footer using the procedures described in the tutorial, which involves putting a copyright statement in the footer. Stepping outside the box, I added an em dash to the copyright line instead of the copyright symbol. Everything looked good until I went to view the pages using the system browser (Firefox). Low and behold, the em dash appears as “&emdash;”. I looked in the source, and sure enough, between the word copyright and 2007 stood the phrase “&emdash;”. So I changed the tag back to “—” in the HTML output, thinking all would be well.

I went back to RoboHelp to change the source documents and the template to which the footer had been added in the first place. I had to change the text in the template using HTML view, and every time I switched back to Design view, RoboHelp would change it back to the incorrect tag (it does the same with the en dash tag). Why’d it do dat? How can I stop it?

I even tried coding &#8212 for the em dash, but RoboHelp changed that back also.

Finally, I modify the file outside of RoboHelp using Wordpad. When I looked at the topic page in HTML view, I noticed that RoboHelp changed the “—” to “—”. Now you really have to explain that one to me???

Another situation that occurred while trying to correct the problem. I decide to make the change in the template and reapply the footer to the topic pages. However, when I applied the template, the topic file changed the template, instead of the template file changing the topic file. “I don’t know what kind of ship you’re running here…” (Col. Jessup from A Few Good Men)???

I do not have a clue as to what I am doing incorrectly. Can anyone provide some sort of clue?

Nick Crenshaw

[Guest]

Nick,

When I converted RH6 projects to RH7, I got my em dashes converted to "&emdash;" which showed up in the text. However, I found that if I replaced them by going to Insert > HTML > Symbol > Em Dash, that fixed the problem. Is that what you did, or were you just trying to hard code using HTML view?

RH does do some funny coding (something like <robohelp>&#8212;</robohelp>, but the em dashes are showing up correctly for me now.

--Ben

[Nick46]

No, I had not used the Insert.HTML.symbol function. I was hard-coding it using the HTML view.

I tried the method you recommended and it seems to work. And, as you noted, Robohelp does frame the HTML coding with its own marker tag (<robohelp>), which I assume tells RoboHelp not to change it. However, it also puts in another tag (<symbol>), which is not a self-terminating tag. I was trying to avoid extraneous tagging, especially if it was not XML compliant. But, I guess I can work within the constraints of the tool because of the other features.

[MergeThis]

Just curious, but how does this tagging look after you generate the output? You might have forgotten that RH adds some of its oft-maligned code simply for WYSIWYG editor display purposes (in the source files). Not all of it makes the transition to output. I also suspect that they've introduced some specific code to handle import/export XML, Vista with a new IE browser on the horizon, etc.


Good luck,
Leon