Numbering

Numbering

If your numbering in RH is applied using ONLY

• The normal style or a style that has no indent built into it.
• The numbering icon.
• The indent icon, if required.

then in Word you will get pretty much the same appearance as in RoboHelp. As that is usually the desired result, how to achieve it is fairly obvious...

Set up all your numbering using an appropriate style and use the numbering icon and the indent icon to get the desired result. By "appropriate style", I mean one that does not have built in numbering or indents as they will not play nicely with Word.

Please do not blame this all on RH. Go to any Word forum or newsgroup and see the postings about numbering set up directly in Word. Also remember that you are working with HTML and outputting to Word which was designed for documentation not in HTML format. There are bound to be issues and we just have to deal with them.

Let's look at some numbering issues that crop up from time to time. This should help you get the desired result and avoid some of the problems that can arise.

Nested Numbering

I originally titled this section Outline Numbering but that refers to the style 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 and so on, often used in the legal profession. To differentiate from that, I have referred to this style of numbering as nested numbering. You're on your own with outline numbering!

Set up a few items in numbered list without any indenting as below.

1. Some text.
2. Some text.
3. Some text.
4. Some text.

Now indent item three and see the change.

1. Some text.
2. Some text.
1. Some text.
3. Some text.

RH has automatically applied outline numbering but what it does not do is change the style.

1. Some text.
2. Some text.
1. Some text.
3. Some text.

In the list above I have just gone to the menu Format | Bullets and Numbering and selected a different style. Unfortunately the next time you indent a paragraph, the different style will not be automatically picked up.

Mapping to Different Styles

So why not create indented styles in RH and map to similar styles in Word? Well look at it this way, why not bang your head against a brick wall? Both can be done and both are painful.

The two bullet points below have been created by using the normal <p> tag for the first one and the <p class=Normal-Indent> tag for the second where Normal-Indent is defined in my style sheet.

Now let's see what they look like in the printed output. In the last page of the wizard, I have mapped the first bullet point to Normal and the second to Normal_Indent in the Word template. They will appear just as above won't they?

Err, no! What has happened is that Word's bullet point position for Normal is indented so it has indented the first bullet point. For the second bullet point it has applied the style where the indent is defined, coincidentally the same amount as the default.

The example above was done with a style sheet which did not define any indent for unordered lists. Now look at the example below which is based on a style sheet where unordered lists are defined to reduce the standard html indent from the left.

Now bearing in mind what happened with the first example, you know what will happen now if we output that to Word don't we?

Did you guess "inconsistency"?

Here because the first bullet point had a non standard html indent, Word applied the indent it thought correct which was No indent and of course that is correct. Unfortunately, although the second point had been mapped to Normal Indent, Word's numbering decided to apply the same indent as the previous paragraph. I cannot explain that.

Now I could go on with more examples but I think the point is made.Mapping styles with indents does not work in the Word document when it is created. So what can be done?

Well there are some things that can be done but let me quickly repeat that using RH's numbering and indent icons is the easiest solution. Anything else will depend on things like how many style sheets you have, how essential it is to get the output in a very precise style because of corporate requirements and so on. So follow those solutions if you can.

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