Compaibility issues when publishing combined manuals

[Sean Godley]

Hi all,

I am having an issue when publishing manuals that are composed of several pre-written manuals. The issue is in the layout consistency. I am publishing two manuals that feature different combinations of previously written manuals. When they are published the text and layout formatting deviates. Let's call the two manuals I am publishing A and B:

A is composed of three manuals: 1,2 and 3.

B is composed of 4 manuals: 1, 2 (the same as in manual A) 4 and 5.

In Manual A the sub-manuals 1 and 3 are fine but there are issues with 2.

In Manual B the sub-manuals 2 and 4 are fine but there are issues with 1 and 5.

The main issue is with image captions. In the problematic manuals the image captions are the same size as regular text. A secondary issue is that bullet lists are not formatted correctly. I believe this is because I am inserting bullet points by pressing tab and then using the "insert icon" feature, as opposed to clicking the bullet point option in the toolbar, which I assume is the 'correct' way to do this - I did not realise that this option existed as I was writing the manuals.

Any help greatly appreciated,

Sean

[Tim Green]

Hi Sean,

It's not really possible to know what is going on here without seeing your projects, but it is probably related to differences in the stylesheets between your different individual projects. When you publish a modular project the stylesheet in the Master project is used for all styles that have the same names throughout the project modules. The only times one of the local stylesheets in the individual modules is used is when they contain a style with a name that does not exist in the master module stylesheet, or when the child module is published on its own.

The easiest way to get consistent styles throughout a modular project is to create a style repository and link it to all your modules, including the master module. Then you must edit the styles in the repository, not in the individual modules, and the styles apply globally for all the modules. See this chapter in the help for details:

http://www.helpandmanual.com/help/index ... tories.htm

There is also another issue you may encounter if you are using Ems as your units in your project's HTML export options. If you do this and you also use the Normal style directly in your topics, instead of another body text style based on Normal, then you can get font size problems with the contents of lists formatted with Normal. The only way to avoid this is to set the relative font size for Ems to exactly 100% in your HTML export options, not larger or smaller -- or not to use Normal directly.

If you are using V3 responsive skins from Premium Pack 3 in a version before the current 3.15 you can also experience this issue, because they set the relative font size internally to 92% instead of 100%. This has been changed in 3.15.

[Sean Godley]

Great Tim, thanks for the help.