Transforming to HTML strips all dash characters

[robert3L]

We have a large Help system authored in DocBook XML. Our developers have integrated Saxon transformation to HTML (EclipseHelp plugin is the final format). We noticed that in all our code examples, all the dash characters are stripped out. I don't think this was happening with the older version of Author I was using... it might have begun with upgrade to 16.1.

The xml sources declare:

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

and all the dash characters are present in the source files as the - character (i.e. not as an entity like –).

The HTML files in our help after the transformation declare:

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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

I tried the DocBook WebHelp scenario (Author 16.1 Mac) on one of the problem source files, and the HTML output file declares:

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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

However, in all cases, the dash (-) characters are stripped.

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$JDK_HOME/bin/keytool -importcert -file

becomes

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$JDK_HOME/bin/keytool importcert file

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apt-­get install openssl

becomes

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apt­get install openssl

In project settings, the Fallback character encoding option is set to: ISO-8859-1

Any suggestions how to fix this will be greatly appreciated.

[robert3L]

For some reason I couldn't edit my post to add an image. So here it is as a reply:

[mihaela]

Hi,

From what I understand the generated HTML contains the dash character but it is not rendered in the browser.
I think that it should be a CSS or a font related problem.
Did you try to open the output in a different browser or on a different machine?

You can send us some sample files (initial document and the generated output) on our support email address: support@oxygenxml.com
and we will try to help you find the problem.

Best regards,
Mihaela

[robert3L]

It definitely happens on different browsers and on different machines. It happens when I do a local build on my Mac using a transformation scenario, but it's also present in Help built with our own builder, using a different CSS, running on the company's demo servers, which run Linux (not sure which Linux).

So I will open a support ticket via email with file samples after I get back to my home location next week. I would like to try the old version of Author on my old computer to see if it's a long-standing problem that nobody noticed before, or if it was introduced after I got a new computer and upgraded Author.

Thanks.