Bullet from Unicode

BertholdL · Unread post by **BertholdL** » Wed Nov 27, 2024 2:09 pm

I am new to H&M and do not know exactly about every change that was made to the bulleted and numbered lists. There are quite some posts on that matter.

Here is my wish:
When selecting a bullet symbol manually, I have to use the Wingdings fonts. In my standard font (Arial) H&M gives me the choice from the first 256 codepoints only. I would prefer to work with Unicode characters instead of Wingdings and thus minmizing the problems with different fonts in my help files (the black triangle is 25BA in hexadecimal Unicode).

Here is how ist looks like now:

Bullet_Symbol.png

My version:
H&M 9.6.0 Build 6810

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Thu Nov 28, 2024 5:56 pm

Hi Berthold,

Unfortunately, bullets in lists are still problematic. This is a legacy issue that is still present in the Help+Manual editor. In the long run we are probably going to have to make some special additions to the XML schema for them, but that isn't going to be possible before the next major version because we can't make schema changes within a version. Currently, Bullet symbols can be processed as Unicode characters in lists, but only manually, because there are the following two requirements:

The character is not from a symbol font like Wingdings or Symbol
The character code is greater than 255

However, currently the symbol selector in Help+Manual will only allow you to select characters up to decimal 255 (ÿ), and this causes an automatic switch of the font charset to SYMBOL CHARSET.

To force the use of Unicode characters as bullets you need to create the list directly in the XML editor tab, entering the necessary settings manually. Here's an example using Arial:

Code: Select all

<para styleclass="Normal">Here is some text</para>
    <list id="0" type="ul" listtype="bullet" formatstring="&#9734;" format-charset="DEFAULT_CHARSET" levelreset="true" legalstyle="false" startfrom="1" styleclass="Normal" style="text-indent:-27px; margin-left:27px; font-family:Arial; font-size:18pt; color:#000000;">
      <li styleclass="Normal" style="text-indent:-27px; margin-left:27px;"><text style="font-size:18pt;">List with custom unicode bullets</text></li>
      <li styleclass="Normal"><text style="font-size:18pt;">List with custom unicode bullets</text></li>
    </list>
    <para styleclass="Normal">Here is some more text</para>

Important factors:

The bullet character definition is the formatstring="☆" and it must be higher than 255 decimal. The syntax must also be correct, with &#xxxx;, otherwise it will get split up into entities.
You must include the font-family: attribute inside the stye= attribute using a Unicode font if the styleclass= definition (the style from your project) used does not use a Unicode font.
You must include the format-charset="DEFAULT_CHARSET" specification.

If any of these things are wrong, Help+Manual will default back to SYMBOL CHARSET and Symbol or Wingdings font when you switch back to the editor.

This is all not ideal, but as I noted it is going to require some major changes to the XML schema to handle it more efficiently. Sorry about that.

BertholdL · Unread post by **BertholdL** » Fri Nov 29, 2024 12:58 pm

Hi Tim,

Thank you, it worked!

Code: Select all

<topic template="Default" modified="2024-11-29T12:33:27.434+01:00" lasteditedby="berthold.ladurner" version="2">
  <title>Neues Topic</title>
  <body>
    <header>
      <para styleclass="Heading1">Neues Topic</para>
    </header>
    <list id="0" type="ol" listtype="decimal" formatstring="&#37;&#48;&#58;&#115;&#46;" format-charset="DEFAULT_CHARSET" levelreset="true" legalstyle="false" startfrom="1" styleclass="Normal" style="font-family:Arial; font-size:10pt; color:#000000;">
      <li styleclass="Normal">Bavaria ipsum dolor sit amet elit kasd i hob di narrisch gean Schdarmbeaga See, et! Weiznglasl </li>
      <li styleclass="Normal">im Beidl est hob i an Suri ut iabaroi, diam! Heitzdog gubergren diam sunt, fugiat blärrd Deandlgwand.</li>
    </list>
    <list id="1" type="ul" listtype="bullet" formatstring="&#9658;" format-charset="DEFAULT_CHARSET" levelreset="true" legalstyle="false" startfrom="1" styleclass="Normal" style="font-family:Arial; font-size:10pt; color:#000000;">
      <li styleclass="Normal">I daad Klampfn ea kimmt Gstanzl assum sog i Radler obandeln helfgod! Wuid Gaudi und sei Baamwach elit koa im Beidl at a Hoiwe do legst di nieda.</li>
    </list>
    <list id="0" type="ol" listtype="decimal" formatstring="&#37;&#48;&#58;&#115;&#46;" format-charset="DEFAULT_CHARSET" levelreset="true" legalstyle="false" startfrom="1" styleclass="Normal" style="font-family:Arial; font-size:10pt; color:#000000;">
      <li styleclass="Normal">Nibh officia kimmt, nulla do Weißwiaschd eu ipsum eiusmod. Ledahosn g’hupft wia gsprunga dolor id Sauakraud, imperdiet! Fugiat Griasnoggalsubbm sadipscing ozapfa, Servas. </li>
    </list>
  </body>
</topic>

Here a tip for other readers:

Mix_ol_ul.png

To get a mixed list with numbers and bullet points, you start with a numbered list. To change single lines into bullet:

Mark the line
Remove the numbering attribute
Add the bullet attribute

Do not try adding the bullet without removing the numbering first, or your whole list is destroyed and cannot be restored in any way other than discarding the latest changes and opening the last saved copy of the project.

Regards
Berthold

PS: The nice Bavarian lorem ipsum generator is here: https://bavaria-ipsum.de/

BertholdL · Unread post by **BertholdL** » Fri Nov 29, 2024 1:13 pm

Another question:
How can I fix the indent? The bullet line has a smaller indent than the numbered lines:

Hängender_Einzug.png

The handles in the top bar cannot be moved. The paragraph formatting does not show any indent.

Thanks in advance!

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Fri Nov 29, 2024 1:14 pm

Do not try adding the bullet without removing the numbering first, or your whole list is destroyed and cannot be restored in any way other than discarding the latest changes and opening the last saved copy of the project.

It's actually a lot easier: Click in the element that you want to change and click on the Numbering List tool once to turn off the list for that element. The main list will then skip over that element and continue its numbering after it. Then you can apply a bullet to that element with the Bullet List tool. (This is achieved by splitting the list in two and using the same list ID for both lists, so that they are still a single list.)

In addition to this you can also define multi-level lists with bullets and numbers on different levels. See here for details:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/hm_w ... tline.html

BertholdL · Unread post by **BertholdL** » Fri Nov 29, 2024 1:18 pm

Click in the element that you want to change and click on the Numbering List tool once to turn off the list for that element. The main list will then skip over that element and continue its numbering after it. Then you can apply a bullet to that element with the Bullet List tool.

This is exactly what I was doing. Maybe I did not express myself very clearly in the 3 steps how to do it. Thank you for writing it down understandably for everyone.

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Fri Nov 29, 2024 4:57 pm

By the way: You definitely never need to trash your topic and restart if something goes wrong with a list. You can always reset everything by selecting the entire list and hitting the List Tool. Sometimes you need to turn it off and on a couple of times to get everything reset but it's easily possible.

BertholdL · Unread post by **BertholdL** » Mon Dec 02, 2024 10:41 am

Thanks for the tip!
Did you notice my post which I published in the very moment when you uploaded your answer? I am afraid it got lost during the continuation of our thread.
viewtopic.php?p=73201#p73201

Unread post by **Tim Green** » Mon Dec 02, 2024 2:56 pm

BertholdL wrote: ↑Mon Dec 02, 2024 10:41 am Did you notice my post which I published in the very moment when you uploaded your answer? I am afraid it got lost during the continuation of our thread.

The indent in lists is controlled by the indent of the FIRST item in the list. By default, lists come with a standard internal indent, which is sufficient for single-digit numbered lists and regular bullets. If you need a larger indent you need to apply a larger hanging indent to the first item in the list, either manually or with a style. This indent then applies to the entire list, including sub-levels.

It's all in this topic in the help ("How to change list indents" section):

https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/hm_w ... tyles.html

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