FIXED! Urgent help needed for output formatting issue

[TR Lisa]

Hello. I've been troubleshooting this issue for weeks and now it's publish day for a major release. Could really use some help. When I preview topics they look fine. When I publish the font is wrong (Times Roman instead of Arial), and the the snippet that I have on the master page shows as text only, when it's supposed to have an image and note box style layout. Also, my table borders and text alignment are all wacked out in the published output bu also look fine in preview. I've checked my master page layout and master style sheet at the project, target, and master page topic layout. Among many other things. Anyone have a clue what might be wrong?

Thank you!

[Scotty]

Assuming you're publishing to HTML of some sort, have you tried in different browsers, and building and viewing on different machines?

Sounds like there might be some stylesheet overriding going on...? Try clearing your browser cache of stylesheets to do with this project. Try publishing to PDF / another format to see if the problem exists there too.

[TR Lisa]

Sorry, yes, HTML5. Seems to occur for all browsers and targets I've tried. Looking in the file list Stylesheet column, it's blank, which I assume is because I've set a target-level stylesheet. I've clicked through a bunch of topic properties, including the master page, and they all show the correct stylesheet. I've looked at that stylesheet and the table stylesheet in the CSS editor and don't see any problem. And everything previews perfectly.

[Scotty]

It really sounds like the master stylesheet isn't being picked up during the build, for whatever reason.

Are there any local stylesheets (i.e. the Allow local stylesheets option is enabled) that might be interfering with build?

Also, might sound stupid, but try renaming your master stylesheet and rebuilding.

What happens if you make the Project Properties your master, and then make every target use project default rather than a target-level stylesheet?

[TR Lisa]

Local style sheets not selected anywhere. I just tried all of the above and same result. Losing my mind. I may try deleting all other style sheets and see what happens. I appreciate your ideas - got any others?

[TR Lisa]

Ok I deleted all but my main stylesheet and have tried setting it as the project, target,and topic default, and specifying it also at each of those levels. Same result! What on earth could it be? My stylesheet looks fine to me, and the topic looks fine in the Flare editor and preview. Surely it's got to be in the target settings somewhere?

[Nita Beck]

I suspect something is invalid in the stylesheet itself, such as a missing closing } or missing trailing ; . You say that it looks OK. Are you opening it in the text editor or in the stylesheet editor? If only in the text editor, try opening it in the stylesheet editor. If there is anything faulty, Flare will throw an error pointing to the line in the code where the fault is.

[TR Lisa]

Well hang on. I just checked the build report and see it's throwing warnings about a missing stylesheet, and among others it's' referencing both my master pages. I don't see anywhere in topic properties to set the stylesheet for master pages, so I checked the XML and it does call out the old/now deleted stylesheet in there. So I've manually updated that line in the XML editor and am building again. I sure hope that is the problem, although if it is I don't think it's been the only problem. Building takes awhile so, I'll be back...

[TR Lisa]

That fixed it! Table styles still messed up but I can fix that manually for now. So the final resolution was to open the master pages in the text editor and fix that erroneous stylesheet reference. After that I also did a project-level find and replace in source code to make sure there were no other topics or files referencing the defunct stylesheet. I don't think that was the root cause though, because there's nothing wrong with the stylesheet -- I replaced it with an exact copy. I do think there were multiple stylesheets in play that shouldn't have been, and at some point trying to fix it with project/target stylesheet settings, and even by using File List to mass update topics with the correct stylesheet, there were still multiple stylesheets present and fouling things up. This project code is so old and convoluted, I'm only surprised this hasn't happened sooner

[Scotty]

Glad you got it fixed, I've been bitten by that XML head stylesheet reference before too. Congrats on meeting the deadline

[TR Lisa]

Appreciate the tips and moral support Deleting all but the one style sheet then checking the build report for warnings was really the light bulb. But I had many other issues with the project before that. The better news is that I finally get to dump this ancient snake pit and start fresh. Going to be a challenge but it's a chance to get it right. Much easier to find and fix my own problems than those of 5 years of countless other writers plus 2 years of total neglect.