Table Borders dropping out in CHM output; WebHelp is OK

[luvthepug]

The borders (both outer and within the table) are dropping out in the CHM output. WebHelp is OK. What's funny is that it looks perfect when I preview the single topic within Flare. It's only in the final CHM output that the table borders drop out. I can barely see them on the screen. They're extremely faint.

I'm not using a table stylesheet. I'm using Flare V7 on a Windows 7 platform.

Since it's only occurring in the CHM, I'm suspicious that it has something to do with my Target settings, but can't think of what.


Any ideas?

[luvthepug]

Well I've solved my own problem! And it was embarassingly easy I must admit .

Since my problem only appeared in the final CHM output, I was focusing my attention there. My solution ended up being basic formatting. Within the table and table-cell properties dialog boxes, I had left the color of the borders to "default". By simply applying a color (black in my case), it solved the problem of the faint lines in the CHM compiled output.

Would still like to know, however, why the table borders only dropped out in the compiled CHM file, but were correct in the topic preview within Flare.

It's a good lesson that the preview feature within the Flare topic page may not truly represent the actual final compiled output.

Now I can finish my project....

[LTinker68]

Would still like to know, however, why the table borders only dropped out in the compiled CHM file, but were correct in the topic preview within Flare.

The topic preview in Flare uses an Internet Explorer rendering engine to show a simulation of what the topic will look like in online output (if the XML Editor is set to web view). IE probably has black defined as the default color for table borders, but I'm guessing CHM output doesn't have a built-in style definition like that, so if the color isn't explicitly set in the stylesheet then nothing will appear.

[luvthepug]

Thanks, Lisa. Makes perfect sense now.

[lacastle]

It's a good lesson that the preview feature within the Flare topic page may not truly represent the actual final compiled output.

For this reason, i hardly ever use preview. Especially with bullets/spacing, the WYSIWYG and preview usually look nothing like the outputs, and even Word and PDF outputs look different.