Help file renders incorrectly but view the same file renders correctly.

[Kristoffer Bjarkefur]

Hello! We published a new version of repkit last week and have run into an issue where one of the help files does not render correctly when using help lint.

When developing packages, our team always checks that help files render properly after updates. Using view lint.sthlp from our development folder, everything looks fine. Initially, I suspected the file might have gotten corrupted during distribution via SSC. But even when viewing the file directly from the PLUS folder using view "C:\ado\plus\l\lint.sthlp", it still renders correctly.

I had assumed that help lint was essentially a wrapper for the view command that locates and opens the relevant file from the PLUS folder.

Does anyone have insight into what might be causing this?

The issue appears in two places:

1. A paragraph above the options table containing three URL links. If I split this into three separate paragraphs, help lint renders each one correctly.
2. The description of the automatic option in the options table. This is a long description, and if I remove just a few words, it renders correctly. Oddly, the description for the force option is even longer but renders fine regardless.

To reproduce, compare the output of view "C:\ado\plus\l\lint.sthlp" (update path to PLUS if needed) and help lint after installing version 3.3 of repkit.

[Nick Cox]

Problems that I can recall:

1. Physical lines in the help file are too long. I think the limit is 255 or 256 characters.

2. Characters after something like {p_end}. Even spaces can cause problems.

[Kristoffer Bjarkefur]

Hey Nick, thanks! Long lines were the issues.

I usually do not like long lines in raw text typing, so I used to split up long rows. But then when doing so, there is a double space in the help file. That is why I stopped as I thought the best practice was single paragraphs with long lines. Do you know what is causing that and do you have a fix for that? Its not a big thing, but it looks like a typo.

Out of curiosity, do you know the difference in how help and view renders? I thought it was a wrapper like ssc install is a wrapper to net install.

[Nick Cox]

view is built-in code, so not like ssc -- which as you know is ado code -- and more importantly the difference is not one I can explain.