Alt text not appearing in WebHelp output

Question

We are using FrameMaker 10 and RoboHelp 9 to output as WebHelp. In the FM files, I have added alternate text to anchored frames containing images. When I update the linked FM files in my RH project, the screen tip is empty for these images, but when I look at the HTML source for the topic, it shows that the alt text is there:
<p class="widegraphic"><img alt="Coach completes form and can either submit now or save it as a draft, edit it, and submit it later. After submit, employee receives task or alert notification, and coach receives task notification. Coach can still edit form at this point. Employee acknolwedges form and completes tasks, and employee task changes to complete. Coach completes task, and task status changes to complete. Lastly, coach receives alert or message notification.  "
                             id="image2" src="using_bpl_form00003.jpg"
                             style="margin-bottom: 6pt;" border="0" />&#160;</p>
When I preview the topic in RH and hover my mouse over the image, the alt text appears in the preview window as expected, both in the default window and when I choose to preview in Firefox and IE. However, when I generate the WebHelp and hover my mouse over the images, nothing shows up at all, and the alt text is replaced by the file name:
<p class="widegraphic"></p>
<div align="left"><img alt="using_bpl_form00003.jpg" style="margin-bottom : 6pt; " id="image2" src="using_bpl_form00003.jpg" />
</div>
If, however, I manually copy and paste the alt text into the screen tip field of the image in the RH topic, the alt text does appear in the WebHelp output:
<p class="widegraphic"><img alt="Coach completes form and can either submit now or save it as a draft, edit it, and submit it later. After submit, employee receives task or alert notification, and coach receives task notification. Coach can still edit form at this point. Employee acknolwedges form and completes tasks, and employee task changes to complete. Coach completes task, and task status changes to complete. Lastly, coach receives alert or message notification.  "
  id="image2" src="using_bpl_form00003.jpg"
  title="Coach completes form and can either submit now or save it as a draft, edit it, and submit it later. After submit, employee receives task or alert notification, and coach receives task notification. Coach can still edit form at this point. Employee acknolwedges form and completes tasks, and employee task changes to complete. Coach completes task, and task status changes to complete. Lastly, coach receives alert or message notification."
  style="margin-bottom: 6pt;" border="0" />&#160;</p>
This seems like a pretty major bug to me. I know there have been scripts developed to delete the alt text so that graphic filename won't show up as the alt text, but is there anything that will take the existing alt text and populate the screen tip/title property with it, which seems to be the key to getting this to work in the output? There's no way I can manually copy and paste all the alt text into the images in RH, especially because I'll just end up having to redo it every time I update the linked FM files.
Thanks,
Jackie

Answer 1

Hi Jackie,
Offhand, your ALT string seems long. A quick search yielded info at http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/images/images_famsupp_85.html
If a lengthy description is needed to describe the image, use the LONGDESC attribute to point to the URL of another page which has the lengthy description. Because LONGDESC is not yet sufficiently supported, also follow the image with a "D-link". A D-link is a standard anchor link with contents consisting of the capital letter "D", like this:
Do you experience the same behavior with short alt strings as well?
-Matt
@mattrsullivan