Icon graphics in RoboHelp 3?

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

I'm working in Word 6/RoboHelp 3 and just encountered a problem
with inserting graphics of icons (for various pushbuttons or icon
bars) into the help file. The typical phrase goes something like "to
do X, press the [] button and count to 10". (Silly example, but you
get the point... inline character {bmc} graphics.)

The icons appear in the correct mid-sentence position, but because
I've created them at close to 100% of their actual size so they're
not invisibly illegible, they make a real mess of line spacing, even
using a relatively large font size. The problem is that Word (or the
Help compiler?) aligns the bottom of each graphic with the bottom of
the characters in each line, and this introduces an enormous gap
between lines. I could live with the weird spacing it it was at
least consistent on either side of the line that contains the
icons, and this would involve centering the icons on each line. Is
there any way to do this?

I have two alternatives that I'll explore if there isn't any simple
solution: (i) replace the icons in the sentence with text ("to do X,
press the X button") and put the graphic in the margin with a legend
("this is the X button"), or (ii) muck about with the leading until
the entire paragraph has enough line spacing to accomodate the
graphics. I don't much like either solution, but (i) is my fallback
position. Any other suggestions?
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca