MadCap Software Forums

I was excited to update to V4.1. The first thing after installing it was to apply a span to an item in a list. That text became invisible.

yikes.

I know this was mentioned in this post
http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =13&t=7739
but I figured that maybe it was worth having a designated thread about.

I guess I will roll back to 4...

Welcome to my world. The roll back was painless at least.

I'm feeling like something of a broken record on this, but to be thorough: if you see this problem, please report it to Madcap so they know how extensive it is.

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

How are you applying the span tag? is this happening in a new topic?

Richard Ferrell wrote:How are you applying the span tag? is this happening in a new topic?

I click and drag to highlight the text. I then click the span tag from the styles list on the right side.

this is happeneing in an existing topic. Unfortunately I have already uninstalled 4.1 so I cannot tell you if it happens in a new topic/project.

Richard - by selecting the text and pressing CTRL + B (I was making something bold). I do appreciate it's not best practise by a long chalk, but sometimes I have a requirement for some span tags here and there. It was an existing topic, I've not tried it in a new topic as I have a deadline today - hence the urgent roll back. I published to PDF and even in the target the text was gone!

could you show us the HTML code that the flare topic is showing after you added the span? I seen this error before. But then it was because the <spam> was not closed properly

Wijnand

I been able to reproduce it:

Select a entire Paragraph then press Shift plus enter and select span:

The entire text is missing

I am going to take a look =)

Before :
<p>Bovenstaande velden zijn specificatievelden. Om een veld aan te kunnen vinken dient u een specificatie aan te maken. Dit doet u door dubbel te klikken op het grijze hokje. U kunt de specificatie weergeven in het nu opgekomen specificatievenster.</p>

After:

<p><span><p>Bovenstaande velden zijn specificatievelden. Om een veld aan te kunnen vinken dient u een specificatie aan te maken. Dit doet u door dubbel te klikken op het grijze hokje. U kunt de specificatie weergeven in het nu opgekomen specificatievenster.</span></p>

When I manually remove the <p> or the <span> tags it will magically appear again, so I am going to assume this has to do with a conflicting Paragraph and span class. If i hoewever make a new HTML file and use notepad to make the exact same situation and same it IE will show the correct information.

wijnand wrote:could you show us the HTML code that the flare topic is showing after you added the span? I seen this error before. But then it was because the <spam> was not closed properly

Wijnand

I doubt that's the issue in this case, since Helen, Jesse, and Dave Lee (in another thread) have all reported that rolling back to 4.0 restores the span tag content. If it was an improperly closed tag it would be a problem in all versions, not just 4.1.

I once had a customer who had a Robohelp project that she wanted to import and basically it generated the following:

<span> blah blah blah <span>hello this is robohelp </span> </span>

And for some reason it would flip the text around:

Hello this is robohelp blah blah blah blah

So thats the reason that i asked

If you are having this issue, then open a support ticket.

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/support/contact.aspx

Consider it done, 8500 - over to you!

It happens for hyperlink (a) tags too, as well as spans.

For me I tend to see it when the tagged text is at the start of a wrapped line in a list item. If I resize the XML editor window so that the line wraps in different places, the invisible tags can be seen again if they fall in the middle of the line (i.e. have some paragraph text to their left).

For me it seemed pretty random as to which text became invisible - not necessarily spans. But, as stated above, reverting to v4 seems to fix it. Just a shame you can't do that from the MadCap website, which only offers 4.1 (even if you click the hyperlink in your v4 upgrade email).

For those of you who are having problems, do you have IE6 installed on your system or IE7? Doesn't have to be set as your default browser, just installed on your system.

Also, if you're having the problem, can you confirm that it only disappears in print layout and not in web layout? That's what's happening with me. If it's gone in print layout and I switch to web layout then it's back.

I said this in another thread, but how about everybody who is having problems post your OS and browser versions in this thread to help identify a potential trend.

I'm using WinXP SP3. I have IE7 installed, but my default browser is FF. I DO NOT see this bug in Flare V4.1

-Paul

I'm using WinXP SP2 on 32-bit machine. My default browser is FF. I am seeing the issue. I saw it in IE6 then I tried installing IE7 and I still see it.

Originally I thought it was only a problem in print output but I did see it in web output when I narrowed the XML Editor window.

As a workaround, it doesn't seem to happen if I set my <p> tag mc-hyphenate property to "never".

LTinker68 wrote:For those of you who are having problems, do you have IE6 installed on your system or IE7? Doesn't have to be set as your default browser, just installed on your system.

Also, if you're having the problem, can you confirm that it only disappears in print layout and not in web layout? That's what's happening with me. If it's gone in print layout and I switch to web layout then it's back.

I have IE7 only.

As I've now uninstalled Flare v4.1 I can't check different layouts, but the point was, text was invisible when editing, so I couldn't work with it, even if the output might have been OK.

Our Developers have been able to duplicate this issue, are looking ora Fix, We'll keep all our MadCap Faithful Posted

I'm using WinXP SP3. I have IE6 installed (I did not install IE7 when autp update requested), but my default browser is FF. I DO see this bug in Flare V4.1

Richard Ferrell wrote:Our Developers have been able to duplicate this issue, are looking ora Fix, We'll keep all our MadCap Faithful Posted

That's good to know. Meanwhile, will you/they withdraw 4.1?

I have to say though that I'm baffled as to how such a major, widespread and obvious bug got through in the first place.

I am having the same problem with spanned text, locally bolded text, and some hyperlinks. Problem appears in online layout (not using print layout yet). I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0 (company requirement). I'm going to have to reinstall 4.0

I had this problem too. I noticed when I adjusted the different windows such as the content explorer and styles windows that the text would reappear. And then when I readjusted a window, it would disappear again. I closed Flare and rebooted my computer. I haven't had any trouble since.

Cecily wrote:I have to say though that I'm baffled as to how such a major, widespread and obvious bug got through in the first place.

It doesn't happen to everyone and I think MadCap had a problem recreating the problem. I even sent them my stylesheet and walked them through the steps that resulted in the problem for me and they couldn't recreate it. Which is why it's such a good idea for everyone to report problems, even if you know someone else has already reported it -- the more info they get, the better (and faster) they're able to troubleshoot the problem.

ralfgrisard wrote:I'm going to have to reinstall 4.0

You could try temporarily setting the <p> tag's mc-hyphenate property to "never". Saves you the time of uninstalling 4.1 and reinstalling 4.0 then installing the fixed upgrade when it becomes available.