I am authoring my content in FrameMaker 8 and attempting to
import my FM docs into a RoboHelp 7 project and am having issues
with mapping FM styles to RH styles in a .css. When I map FM to RH,
the paragraphs in RoboHelp have the RH style applied, but retain
most of the formatting that was in the FM doc. I’ve tried
reapplying the .css and template, but the only thing that corrects
the formatting is to select each individual paragraph and reapply
the style from the .css. Has anyone else had this problem? Am I
missing a setting that I should set? Is there a workaround?
For more info, here’s some extra detail about exactly what is
happening (I’ll use one style to illustrate what is happening):
1. In my FM document I have a style called FrameParagraph
that is formatted with 10pt Times. In my RH project, I have a style
called RoboParagraph that is formatted with 9pt and a font set
(Arial, Verdana, Helvetica).
2. When I import my FM document, I map FrameParagraph to
RoboParagraph.
3. When I open my topic, the paragraph is tagged with
RoboParagraph but is formatted with 10 pt Times.
4. Attempting to reapply the .css does not correct the issue.
5. Attempting to reapply the RH template does not correct the
issue.
6. To correct the formatting issue, I have to select the
paragraph and reapply RoboParagraph.
|||
The magic is in the fmstyles.css file.
See the following blog posts from Vivek Jain for some more
info on
this:
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/12/editing_styles_in_robohelp_for .html
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/11/editing_style_information_in_r .html
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/11/framemaker_and_robohelp_style. html
|||
The blogs have a wealth of information. But after following
all instructions, I’m still having the issue where text formatting
is being retained from the original FM document when I map to RH
styles.
|||
Now that I’ve had time to check out the blogs and follow the
instructions, I’ve found that I’m still having the same issue, even
when I use the fmstyles.css.
When I map my FM paragraph tags to RH styles in the
fmstyles.css style sheet, the paragraphs are retaining the
formatting from the FM paragraph tags, even though they now show
that they are mapped to a RH style in the RH project.
I’m also noticing that my cross-references are showing up as
plain text in the RH project. Are the issues related?
Is anyone else having this problem?
|||
I’m still guessing about several areas of this program’s
functionality and whether there are bugs or I am missing something
(or both)… so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
(1) I trust you’ve discovered you need to ‘update’ your
‘added by reference’ frame files from within RH7 to get force the
desired paragraph mappings. Otherwise systems like those you’ve
described will occur.
(2) If the above is true, then try this: Create Topic
Template in RH7. Specify that the template uses fmstyles.css, the
apply that template to all topics in your project.
Unfortunately there are two pernicious bugs related to topics
templates. The first is that the template association is lost
whenever you update your Frame Files, so you have to manually
re-apply the template to all your topics — at least before you do
your final build. The second bug is in the Template selection
dialog, if you associate the template with all your topics then
again select ‘apply’ or ‘OK’, RH7 then proceeds to undo what you
have done an disassociates the template from all topics! Play with
it, you’ll see. This bug isn’t too big of a deal, just a nuisance
to be aware of in order to get the desired output.
Hope this helps
|||
Thank you for the help. … I’ve tried both suggestions with
no luck.
But, I think I’ve at least narrowed down the culprit and when
it is happening … but I still can’t figure out how to solve this
issue.
It looks like the issue is showing up when the HTML
files/topics are created from the referenced FrameMaker book. When
the files are created (or updated), there is some extra HTML code
being added. Here’s an example cut-and-pasted directly from one of
the topics’ HTML code:
<p class=Paragraph style=”text-align: left; margin-bottom:
6.000pt; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.0pt; letter-spacing:
0.03em;” align=left>
Since I’m mapping to a CSS, I would expect the code to look
like this:
<p class=Paragraph>
I’ve found that I can manually remove the font formatting
from the HTML and get the result I’m looking for … but when you
update the referenced FM files, the junk code comes back.
Reapplying the template and/or the CSS doesn’t help.
Should I be selecting an option in the mapping windows that
I’m not?
|||
I forget the exact name, but check the use ‘User-Defined
Paragraph’ or ‘Style’ or whatever for that style
|||
I’m starting to think this is a bug … hopefully there is a
workaround.
Here’s what I’ve discovered:
Our FM documents are authored using Structured FrameMaker.
This issue is occuring when I add a structured book to my Robohelp
project.
To try to troubleshoot the problem, I created an unstructured
FrameMaker book and added it to my Robohelp project. With the
unstructured book, everything maps perfectly and the formatting
looks exactly as determined by the CSS.
Does anyone have any ideas for a workaround for this
issue?
|||
I’ve seen some posts about trouble converting structured FM;
good luck.
|||
I know people keep posting these links to the Adobe tech
blogs, but you should know by now that these are minimally helpful
AT BEST.
What we seem to need to know are:
What is the proper procedure for applying custom styles on
the RH side so that the output matches the Framemaker output (PDF,
for example) exactly? The captivate demo on the blog page does not
help. My styles keep getting overwritten, and I’m updating my Frame
references the way I’m supposed to. By proper procedure I mean from
soup to nuts, with no detail left unsaid.
What is the relationship between fmstyles.css and individual
chapter css files with regard to which css has precedence? When
does one overwrite the other?
I have created my own version of fmstyles.css and when I
create the project in RH, I copy my fmstyles.css over the one
created with the project. I’ve also created my own master css file
that contains all the style info I need for every chapter. After I
bring the Frame book into RH by reference, I copy over the contents
of each chapter’s css file with my own styles using Dreamweaver. I
can see the styles change dynamically in RH, yet at some point, my
styles continually get overwritten. And I AM choosing to retain
modifications to the file when prompted by RH. It is impractical to
go into each chapter CSS from within RH and change the styles one
at a time.
My own styles are critical to retain because of the alignment
problems inherent in the way RH handles numbered lists, bullet
lists, and other styles with any kind of indent.
Also, why does RH change my carefully measured px
measurements with inches or points? When it does this, the
alignment tends to change.
Where are the technical gurus on this stuff? There is very
little in the way of assistance in this critical area, and very
little that helps users understand how this stuff is working.
There’s some automation going on with regard to styles that I don’t
fully understand, and I am not seeing any answers anywhere.
PLEASE ADOBE HELP US!
|||
You should never modify the chapter level css. The chapter
level css are auto generated using fmstyles.css and the
mapping.
|||
Okay, so now I know to create my custom RoboHelp styles in my
own version of framestyles.css. So what I do is create the RH
project, THEN copy MY version of fmstyles.css into the project
folder. However, when I import my FrameMaker book into the RH
project using Add by Reference, all of my custom styles are copied
and the copies of all my styles have a suffix of “_1″ added to
them. These copies are the ones used in RoboHelp. What is happening
to my styles and why is RH creating copies?
Using the same process, when I map styles I found that when I
mapped the FrameMaker styles to my custom styles in fmstyles.css, I
lose my formatting. So my question is this: if the proper way to
customize styles in RH is to modify the fmstyles.css, why do I lose
my formatting when I map the FM styles to my customer styles in the
import process? This is the same issue as the first post on this
page, and it hasn’t been addressed yet.
|||
Michael,
Are you using standard HTML tag names h1, p, in fmstyles for
your actual custom paragraph tag names?
If so, then this may be causing the _1. I have a fuzzy memory
of a similar result.
A more straightforward approach would be nice.
|||
I’m NOT using standard HTML tag names (I use “Heading1,
Heading2, Bullet, BulletFirst, etc). Just the typical
FrameMaker-type tag names.
RH is doing something behind the scenes during the conversion
process that is automating the generating of styles. Doesn’t seem
to matter how I do it, if I use my own fmstyles.css, I get these
funky style copies in each chapter css.
If I map the FM styles to my custom fmstyles.css styles in
the mapping stage of the process, I lose all my formatting for
those mapped styles. If I choose “Source” in the mapping stage, I
get those style copies for the mapped styles.
Those are my two choices, and neither one gives me the
results I need, unless there’s a third choice I’m not considering.
I should point out that the only styles that are being
negatively affected by this process are my numbered and bulleted
list styles.
|||
In the ‘FrameMaker Styles Conversion Properties’ dialog, do
you have the ‘User-Defined HTML Tag’ check box checked for each of
your ‘custom’ styles?
|||
No, I don’t have that checked.
If I check it and map the FM style to my custom style, I lose
my formatting for that style.
If I check it and map the FM style to Source, I retain my
formatting for that style, which is the same thing that happens if
I don’t check ‘User-Defined HTML Tag.’
Either way, I’m still getting copies of my styles appended
with the suffix “_1″ in each chapter.css.
|||
RoboHelp maintains two styles for lists – one for the
paragraph and one for the bullets/numbering.
After you have mapped your FrameMaker styles to custom styles
in RoboHelp, what style is shown in the generated topics. Since the
mapping is done, HTML topic must be using the styles from the
chapter level CSS – which must reference the styles you added in
fmstyles.css. How is the style in chapter level css different from
your custom style in fmstyles.css?
|||
quote:
Originally posted by:
JainVivek
RoboHelp maintains two styles for lists – one for the
paragraph and one for the bullets/numbering.After you have mapped your FrameMaker styles to custom styles
in RoboHelp, what style is shown in the generated topics. Since the
mapping is done, HTML topic must be using the styles from the
chapter level CSS – which must reference the styles you added in
fmstyles.css. How is the style in chapter level css different from
your custom style in fmstyles.css?
The style shown in the generated topics is the <p> tag
with the class attribute. However, the style listed with the class
attribute (in every case) is not the originally named custom style
in fmstyles.css, but a new generated style with a suffix of “_1″.
For example, my style FM_Bullet becomes FM_Bullet1 in the generated
topic but here’s the weird thing – in the .css file generated for
the chapter, the style definition is correct even if the style name
has been modified by RH (specifically the text indent, which I have
for the example style set to -18pt), but in the generated topics,
the text indent for that style is -24pt.
How do I keep this from happening? I know I’m missing
something here but I don’t know what.
|||
RoboHelp auto-generates the styles in RoboHelp for FrameMaker
styles which are mapped to Source. Names for the auto-generated
styles have a prefix “FM_”, for example, “FM_Bullet” is a style
auto-generated from FrameMaker style “Bullet”. Do you have a style
in FrameMaker which is named “Bullet” or “Bullet1″ and that is
mapped to Source in the mapping dialog?
RoboHelp does not modify styles added to fmstyles.css. I
verified this for almost 5-6 styles I added to fmstyles.css and
mapped FrameMaker styles to them.
|||
I have a series of Bullet styles in FrameMaker (Bullet,
BulletFirst, etc.). I map those to FM_Bullet, FM_BulletFirst, and
so on when I map Frame styles to RH styles in RH. When I view the
topics, those custom styles have been overwritten with
chapter-level styles FM_Bullet_1, FM_BulletFirst_1, and so on.
Based on your last reply, I thought that maybe if I changed the
style names in my custom fmstyles to delete the “FM_” part of the
style names that that would solve the problem, but I did that, then
remapped my Frame bullet styles to my new renamed custom bullet
styles and got worse results – same “_1″ suffix added to the style
name in the chapter level css, but also a total loss of paragraph
indenting. So then I thought maybe the presence of ANY styles in my
custom fmstyles.css with the prefix “FM_” was causing the
overwriting of styles, so I removed that prefix from all styles,
remapped the Frame styles to the newly renamed styles (still not
mapping them to Source), regenerated fresh chapter-level css files
and updated everything. With some minor tweaks to indents to a few
styles, this seems to have worked.
So in summary, for the benefit of others who are having
similar problems, the keys for me turned out to be:
RoboHelp auto-generates the styles in RoboHelp for FrameMaker
styles which are mapped to Source. Names for the auto-generated
styles have a prefix “FM_”
Everytime you make a change to your custom fmstyles.css file,
you should close the RH project and delete the generated
chapter-level css files in Windows Explorer; when you open the
project again, you get a “clean” conversion of styles when you
Force Update. If you do not delete the chapter-level css files and
you keep changing/testing your custom styles and mapping, you will
get unpredictable results because these files are generated by RH.
Do NOT name your custom styles “FM_stylename” – these will be
overwritten by RH (see first bullet).
Conversion of styles for table cells and table cell headings
are still problematic. I simply cannot get these to convert
properly and retain their styles completely. I am using Frame
styles names “CellBody” and “CellHeading”. I’m losing my indents
unless I map my table styles. In many trials I’m losing font
information as well.
All in all, I’ve got it working close to the way I want but
not perfect by any means. The technical details of the conversion
process, such as what gets converted, how do the CSS files get
created, how does RH deal with the different variations of style
names from FrameMaker, etc) would be extremely helpful to document.
As it is, I’ve only gleaned those details from Adobe’s answers on
this forum. Also, table cell conversion is still lousy. The same
rules that apply to the conversion of other FM styles do not seem
to apply consistently to table cell formatting.
|||
Michael,
Your posting has been invaluable in helping me understand the
issues I was having with my own “master” fmstyle.css that I was
trying to use, thank you very much!
Now that I have gotten past the hurdles you described, I’ve
encountered one more. I am unable to split my Frame files into
topics using the Style Settings. Did you encounter and solve this
problem (I hope)? I mapped the Frame styles to RoboHelp styles and
then selected the mapped RoboHelp styles in the Pagination
settings, saved the project, did a force update, etc., but still
the files are not split into topics. Any clue?
|||
Right click the FrameMaker document in RoboHelp project
manager -> Select Properties -> navigate to tab File Update
Settings. Please check if you have selected the HTML file in
RoboHelp for “Preserve Modifications for these files”.
|||
Here’s a simple workaround to many of the CSS-related
problems in the integration of FM with RH, based on my own
experience using the product:
AFTER I bring in all the FM content, THEN I select all my
topics in the Topic List, right-click and select Properties, then
import my OWN stylesheet (NOT named fmstyles.css) and apply it to
all. Instantly solves many problems with styles not being correctly
rendered after importing the FrameMaker content. Rather than
continue to mess with RH’s CSS structure (master
fmstyles.css—> generating chapter-level CSS files
automatically), this simple approach gives me much greater control
over the rendering of the styles AND I am no longer tethered to
RH’s CSS process. After every update, I have to re-apply my own CSS
file, but that’s very simple and quick and it works. I can also
double-click my own imported CSS file in the RH Project Manager and
edit it from within RH, which RH seems to prefer (see next
paragraph).
One other useful tidbit: Do NOT use Dreamweaver to edit
fmstyles.css. RH doesn’t seem to like it and often will ignore
changes that you’ve painstakingly put into the css file in
Dreamweaver outside of RH. If you MUST use fmstyles.css, you should
edit it from within RH.
|||
> I am unable to split my Frame files into topics using
the Style Settings
I found that I can only split topics based on styles for
which I have selected to ignore the autonumbering. Perhaps your
problem is related.
|||
“The technical details of the conversion process, such as what
gets converted, how do the CSS files get created, how does RH deal
with the different variations of style names from FrameMaker, etc)
would be extremely helpful to document.”
Hear! Hear!
This kind of information could have saved me weeks of time of
trying to reverse engineer what is going on between FrameMaker and
RoboHelp.
|||
michaelscohen ,
This looks like a potential solution for our issues … just
a couple questions.
Are you using structured or unstructured FrameMaker? Are you
creating an entirely new CSS outside of Robohelp, or are you simply
renaming a CSS created in Robohelp and then importing that CSS? I
tried the latter and that didn’t solve our formatting issues.
Thank you for the help.
|||
Vivek,
Please hear us. Almost everything in this thread (many hours
of user effort) goes away if you:
Provide one (and only one) CSS in the output that all output
files reference: Michael’s “Here’s a simple workaround…” fix
(described above) effectively accomplishes this goal, but it is a
pain in the neck having to remember, select all, and re-apply the
stylesheet after every update. Experienced Frame users routinely
seek and destroy paragraph overrides, so chapter-level CSS files
supporting these overrides in the output HTML really are at odds
with this workflow. 99.9% of us want ‘one CSS’ functionality. I’m
not sure that anyone wants the current ‘multitude of’ approach to
CSS files.
|||
I should add that I am aware that many of you structured
authors do have something of an awkward peace-accord with paragraph
overrides, but that really is a bug; EDDs should taken into
consideration there.
|||
quote:
Originally posted by:
tdigiurco
michaelscohen ,
This looks like a potential solution for our issues … just
a couple questions.
Are you using structured or unstructured FrameMaker? Are you
creating an entirely new CSS outside of Robohelp, or are you simply
renaming a CSS created in Robohelp and then importing that CSS? I
tried the latter and that didn’t solve our formatting issues.
Thank you for the help.
td:
I am using unstructured FM. Regarding the CSS: I started with
my own modified version of fmstyles.css, but I encountered numerous
problems. I ended up modifying the CSS the way I wanted to outside
of RH, renamed it, then imported my CSS after I synched with all my
FM content. I don’t see why simply renaming a RH-created CSS (ex.,
fmstyles) then importing it later would make a difference, unless
there is something about the location of the renamed CSS that RH is
tripping over. One thing that is useful AFTER you import an
external CSS is that you can edit it from within RH. That usually
does the trick for stubborn CSS settings that RH doesn’t like; RH
really prefers it if you modify the CSS from within RH. The other
thing that needs to be said is if you do anything with RH-generated
CSS outside of RH, such as renaming or whatever, you should
probably close your RH project, make the changes outside of RH (for
example Dreamweaver), then re-open your RH project and import the
CSS. For example, if you rename your fmstyles.css file, I would
close my RH project, copy the CSS to another directory outside of
your project (just to be on the safe side; RH tends to be fussy
about such things), then import it into your project; RH will
automatically move the imported CSS to your project folder.
|||
Hi there,
I’m having the same problem as outlined in this thread and have tried the answers provided. It’s not working, This is my process – perhaps someone can point out my fatal flaw?
- Using RoboHelp 7, FrameMaker 8
- Have formatted a master CSS file with the styles from my Frame files with how I want everything to look. Have double checked that the CSS is accurate using DreamWeaver.
This is what I’ve done in RoboHelp:
- Start RoboHelp project.
- Import FrameMaker files by reference.
- When Frame files first show up, the formatting looks mostly like I want it to. This is without applying the fmstyles.css to all topics. All topics are using their raw Frame generated CSS files. For example, all topics in a specific chapter use Chapter.css for their CSS.
- Right click frame files > Properties > Styles tab > Edit button to edit style mappings.
- Map H1 to Heading 1. Close mappings.
- Select new topics be generated after ever H1 from check list in properties. Click ok.
- Right click frame files > update.
- Frame files are updated, and new topics are created for each H1.
- Close RoboHelp project.
- Open fmstyles.css in notepad, copy and paste master CSS styles to fmstyles.css and save.
- Open RoboHelp project again.
- Opening mappings, and map styles to Frame styles.
- I’ve noticed not all of my FrameMaker styles are actually present in the list. This is somewhat troubling, and I can’t figure out why they would not be picked up.
- Save everything.
- Right click Frame files > update.
- Frame files again are produced and again, the formatting looks how I want it to look but all topics are using their individual chapter CSSs. Fmstyles.css has NOT been applied to any of the generated topics yet.
- Save everything again.
- In the topic list, I select all topics, right click and apply fmstyles.css
- The result of this action is that all formatting is screwed up. Nothing looks how it should, no bullets show up as they should.
I can take screens shots of the before and after of what I am talking about above, but the general gist is that as soon as I apply fmstyles.css, the formatting looses any resemblance to what I actualy coded in to the master CSS. I’ve applied the master CSS to generated RoboHelp HTML in another application, and it looks fine. But when in RoboHelp, the code gets munched and nothing functions as expected.
I would really appreciate some insight in to this problem
Thanks,
diane
|||
Ms. Huffman,
I’m certainly no expert on this subject, but based on the previous posts on this thread, your “fatal flaw” may be associated with your step 8. RH may not react well to .CSS edits outside of its environment. I always edit my fmstyles.css file from within RH.
As for step 10 of your process, take a look at the thread, .
Related posts:
- RoboHelp Style persistence?
- Left Indent Setting for List Styles Not Retained
- Incorrect import of FrameMaker list styles
- Mapping CSS styles to Word styles
- Would you recommend RoboHelp and FrameMaker?
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