20.3.8 Coping with JavaHelp / Oracle Help viewer limitations

JavaHelp viewer limitations and defects are described in the JavaHelp System User’s Guide. DITA2Go provides workarounds for some; others you will have to put up with. The Oracle Help viewer has a different set of limitations. Some known limitations:

Anchor tags in JavaHelp

Image size units in JavaHelp

CSS in JavaHelp or Oracle Help

Index entries.

Anchor tags in JavaHelp

Each anchor tag in HTML, including the <a> tag produced from each HyperAnchor PI marker in your DITA document, is replaced by a space in the JavaHelp viewer. There is no feasible workaround for this defect. DITA2Go usually produces more than one <a name=...>, and <a> tags cannot be nested. Placing all <a> tags before the opening <p> eliminates the spaces, but adds a blank line above, which is even worse.

Image size units in JavaHelp

A px suffix on image width and height attribute values causes the JavaHelp viewer to show the image as a thumbnail; so for JavaHelp, by default DITA2Go omits the suffix. Make sure you do not override this default; see §32.8.3 Specifying px units for graphics sized in pixels.

CSS in JavaHelp or Oracle Help

Support for CSS is limited (in different ways) in the JavaHelp and Oracle Help viewers. You might have to resort to font tags and alignment attributes instead of using a style sheet. See §30.6.3 Including or excluding font tags.

JavaHelp CSS does not respect the list-style rule; therefore, by default, DITA2Go adds the type attribute to list wrappers ol and ul. To omit the type attribute from list wrappers:

[CSS]
; UseListTypeAttribute = Yes (default for JavaHelp, to fix CSS bug)
;  or No (default for other formats, go by NoAttribLists value)
UseListTypeAttribute = No

See §30.11.2.6 Including or excluding the type list attribute.

JavaHelp CSS does not support conditional flagging; see §9.3 Including flags for ditaval conditions.

Index entries

Index entries have limitations in both viewers; see §20.4.3 Configuring index entries for JavaHelp or Oracle Help.

Previous Topic:  20.3.7.6 Requiring full paths in the helpset file

Next Topic:  20.3.9 Compiling JavaHelp with Helen

Parent Topic:  20.3 Setting up a JavaHelp or Oracle Help project

Sibling Topics:

20.3.1 Creating a JavaHelp or Oracle Help for Java project

20.3.2 Deciding where to locate configuration settings

20.3.3 Specifying output options for JavaHelp

20.3.4 Establishing a JavaHelp environment

20.3.5 Establishing an Oracle Help environment

20.3.6 Creating a directory structure for JavaHelp / Oracle Help

20.3.7 Configuring the helpset file

20.3.9 Compiling JavaHelp with Helen