Odd "Publish" Results on a Virtual Machine

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Kat Correa
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Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:39 pm

Odd "Publish" Results on a Virtual Machine

Unread post by Kat Correa »

Our office has our network and workstations in the cloud which we access via VPN. HM6 is installed on my virtual machine, and I am the only user. When publishing my software help file to .chm and .pdf, I get very unusual results showing incorrect page layout and design. See two screenshots attached. Previously, I would get these same results while using HM6 on my work desktop PC and I was logged in remotely. Is there anything that can be done to allow HM6 to publish clean files while using it on a virtual machine?

Thank you,
Kat
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Tim Green
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Re: Odd "Publish" Results on a Virtual Machine

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Kat,

On your CHM output: Tabs do not exist in HTML, so anything you format with tabs will never be correct in your HTML output. If you want to format tabular data in HTML you need to use tables. For simple lists with left and right parts you can also use paragraphs with hanging indents. In Help+Manual you then DO use a tab for the space between the left and right parts of the hanging indent. The tab will then be converted to a stable HTML layout in the output. That is also the only place you should ever use a tab in a project that will be exported to HTML.

The scaling of the PDF output will be related to your screen settings and the settings of the PDF output printer driver selected. Go to View > Program Options '> PDF and make sure that you are NOT using the screen driver as your printer driver. Choose a standard printer driver instead, and NOT a "PDF driver". For testing you can use the Microsoft XPS Document Driver, which will always produce quite good results. However, you can't set it to a higher dpi for higher quality PDF output. For that it's best to install a standard printer driver from the Windows list. Any Brother or HP laser printer driver is fine. This is also better than the "optimized" drivers provided with the printers themselves, which sometimes cause problems for PDF output because of their special configuration.

PS: Note that Help+Manual 6 is now obsolete and has not been under development for quite a few years, so nothing in the program itself can be changed any more.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Kat Correa
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 5:39 pm

Re: Odd "Publish" Results on a Virtual Machine

Unread post by Kat Correa »

Thank you Tim. When I said tabs, I meant that the ruler setting with the tiny triangles for indents is what I'm using. I will check the PDF output printer drive. If I update to HM8, will my current file import?
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Tim Green
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Re: Odd "Publish" Results on a Virtual Machine

Unread post by Tim Green »

Kat Correa wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:52 pm Thank you Tim. When I said tabs, I meant that the ruler setting with the tiny triangles for indents is what I'm using.

Yes, and that is exactly what you cannot use in any HTML document format. The entire concept of tabs does not exist in HTML because it is a format designed for resizable windows. Tabs can only work on printed documents in pages whose dimensions never change. This also applies to PDF, because a PDF is really just a printed page stored in a file.
I will check the PDF output printer drive. If I update to HM8, will my current file import?
Yes, of course. You can edit your HM6 project directly with HM8 without conversion.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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