round bullets in PDF

[bobmoon]

I would like to use simple round bullets in PDFs, but I'm having trouble. I'm wrestling with the differences between bullets in online targets and PDF. Here is an approximation of my rule in the default (online) medium:

li.bullet {
font-size: 8pt;
list-style-position: outside;
list-style: url(small_gold_disc.gif);
list-style-type: disc;
}

This generates bulleted lists in WebHelp with my gold bullet. The problem is that this bullet doesn't look good when viewed and printed in PDF--it's dithered and splotchy. But, when I generate PDFs using this rule, it seems to ignore the list-style-type rule and only use the image.

I've tried duplicating the rule in the print medium and deleting the list-style: url(small_gold_disc.gif) rule, but then it pulls the value from the default medium. I've tried putting list-style: url(), but then that is interpreted as list-style: none, and I get no bullet at all.

Is anyone doing simple round bullets in PDF? How do you do it?

Thanks,
Bob

[KevinDAmery]

For why the image is of poor quality, take a look at this thread:

http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/viewto ... =10&t=8563

Basically, 4.2 prior to the patch that was released this week was converting all graphics to JPEG and applying medium compression to it. So what you are seeing is probably JPEG artifacts. The patch should fix it (at the expense of making much larger PDFs).

[NorthEast]

I've tried duplicating the rule in the print medium and deleting the list-style: url(small_gold_disc.gif) rule, but then it pulls the value from the default medium. I've tried putting list-style: url(), but then that is interpreted as list-style: none, and I get no bullet at all.

First off, to set the list image use the list-style-image property, not the list-style property - that is the shorthand for setting all the list properties in one go, you'd normally use that instead of using all the other list-style-x properties.

So, for you print output you'd have:

list-style-image: none;

http://www.w3schools.com/Css/pr_list-style-image.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/Css/pr_list-style.asp

[bobmoon]

First off, to set the list image use the list-style-image property, not the list-style property

When I inherited this stylesheet it had duplicate entries for all of the bullet styles like this:

li.bullet {
list-style-image: url('smallgray.gif');
list-style: url(smallgray.gif);
}

I wasn't sure why there was this duplication, but I just assumed my predecessor did it that way on purpose and never tried removing the shorthand version. In playing with this problem, I tried several permutions, but never your solution. This achieves what I'm looking for when I generate PDF output from the print medium:

li.bullet {
list-style-image: none;
list-style-type: disc;
}

The disc bullet looks rather large, but I bet that's just based on the font-size of my text. I can't think of any way to adjust the size of the bullet without reducing the size of the associate text.

Thanks!
Bob