Need CSS Help

Which version of RoboHelp are you using and are all the patches applied?

What is happening is that when you import, RoboHelp creates a separate CSS for the topics created from the import. How to deal with that is described on my site. Allowing RoboHelp to link to your own CSS as part of the import is something I have been campaigning for. I thought I recently saw something about that being fixed but I cannot locate it now. That is something I am checking out but if there had been a change, it would be version specific.

You may have bought RoboHelp 2015 in December but once released the download stays the same and does not include any patches. You need to apply them for other reasons rather than this issue.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

Hi there

Another thing to consider and for us to know is where you are seeing this. Note that it's likely you will see different representation of things in the RoboHelp editor VS the RoboHelp Preview window. And again, differences between what you see in the RoboHelp Preview window and the Browser. And lastly, as we all know, not only different browsers, but different versions of the same browser can present things differently.

Cheers... Rick

A couple of other things.

Check that there isn't a stylesheet in each topic between <style> tags. Historically an override of the hyperlink colours is placed here, and it's a pain.

Also, a whole bunch of inline formatting is usually included as well, so you may need to run through and replace a bunch of stuff in the code.

For example:

<p style="text-indent: -18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Symbol;">·<span

  style="font: 7.0pt 'Times New Roman';">&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;</span></span>&#160;Contact

record</p>

(I'm assuming this still happens in RH2015. )

Hi there

I'm not sure if Peter is busy at the moment. Hopefully he won't mind my offering my own observations here.

a. default.css - this has some headings, and a few other styles. I understand that we can use this instead of creating our own, but we one modify this and add styles to it?

I believe when you create a project you get a "default.css" as part of the basic file set. The thought is that you then modify that css to become what you want or need.

b. the css named for the imported Word doc - shoudl I keep this so that when I generate a print doc, I can tell it to use this style sheet?

I've always ignored these CSS files. After importing from Word, I just apply my own desired CSS and promptly ignored the CSS that is created for each Word document. And as related specifically to the last part of your statement: should I keep this so that when I generate a print doc, I can tell it to use this style sheet?

I believe when you create printed docs, IF you are using a CSS and not the Word template, you can only choose ONE CSS file. So if you import perhaps 30 Word documents, you will end up with 30 different CSS files as a result. In that case, will the REAL CSS please stand up?

c. RHStyleMapping.css - no idea what to do with this

d. the style sheet I created which I referred to in my original post (the one that isn't working)

I'll defer to Peter or another user to offer advice on the last two. Like the other things, I've personally always ignored the RHStyleMapping.css.

Cheers... Rick

Rick's approach is fine if the style names in his CSS match the Word names. If not RoboHelp just matches what it can and any styles not matched get set to None. You then have to go through all the topics looking for paragraphs set to None and apply a style. That is a most enjoyable task, not. Hence best to import into a blank project as I suggest, apply your own CSS and see what it looks like. Do your cleaning up there and then import those topics into your live project.

As for keeping the CSS RoboHelp created, I wouldn't bother. Two reasons, I prefer to output to a Word template that I have created with the right style names that match my CSS. It takes some time but it's a once only task. That way I can map the styles but the appearance will be different as Heading 1 for example will be say Verdana Bold Blue 18 point online but perhaps be Black and 16 point in print. You could create a variant of your CSS but generally I find the template method better. The other reason is that after cleaning up during the import, the import CSS will no longer map because you have applied styles in RoboHelp.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

I think you can just click the number or bullet icon in the toolbar to turn your selected text into a list. Don't worry, this won't* apply inline styling, it just applies the html ol/ul/li tags to turn your text into a list.

You don't really need to select a separate style (e.g. Normal) for the list, but you can if you want to. (Basically if you select Normal, it adds a p tag inside each li tag.)

If that looks fine, carry on, otherwise you can always post back with questions on how to customise the look and feel of your lists.

* well technically, in RH11 at least, it does add the type of number or bullet inline, such as disc or square, or decimal or roman numeral, etc, which is annoying but fairly minor and nothing you can do about it unless you want to manually code your lists.

Amber is correct that you don't have to select Normal but there is a reason for doing so. If you don't the browser used may have a different default font to the one you use for body text. What the user would then see is say Verdana 10pt if that is what you have chosen for your Normal paragraphs and the lists would be defined by their browser default, which could be Times Roman 12 point.

Hence in my work, when I use the list icon, I also select Normal to avoid that.

Hope we have resolved your issue.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge