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Question

External HTML editor for RH

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
September 22, 2008
6 replies
1892 views

Hi all,

I would be interested in hearing of any external HTML editors that RH users like using with RH instead of its internal editor.

Somebody please suggest a free (or almost free) HTML editor that features lots of features, eg, hiliting, split Design/HTML windows, clean XHTML code and checker.

Wasn't there once some browser called Mozila? Or was it called Netscape?

Tia

- avi

HTML

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A

avi10000Author

Known Participant

>> I had to smile. You don't like the quality of RH's code so you are writing in Word, which produces awful HTML.

I don't think you understood me. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. My using Word was a quick and dirty fix, but it at least it allowed me to make a quickly nice looking draft for the SMEs to review.

And now I am going to back to my original task, namely how to use RH as a comfortable authoring platform. Once I have done that I will then have to import the work I have done using Word, in some way or other.

>> If RH is so bad, how come it also has the biggest market share?
I didn't say it is so bad; maybe it just needs some help. But, ideally, I would be looking for a one-stop solution all-in-the-box soln.

>> If RH is so bad, how come it also has the biggest market share?
As for the question itself, well this would be a common phenomenon in our industry, and indeed in the whole of life and throughout history.

- avi

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

I had to smile. You don't like the quality of RH's code so you are writing in Word, which produces awful HTML.

If RH is so bad, how come it also has the biggest market share?

Good luck in your search.

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Peter Grainge

Community Expert

RH MVPS? Adobe Community Expert is the term. There's no such term as RH MVPS.

As soon as you open the topic in RH's editor it is going to rewrite the code. Sure you can do what you suggest but it means first you write the text, then have to go back and consider every point where you wanted those features, instead of adding them there and then.

You have to somehow indicate that you want a variable here, a snippet there and so on and until you do that in RH, you have no WYSIWYG as there will be no snippet there.

Go back to your original post here. What is it that is missing in the RH editor? It will not be the cleaner code. RH7 cleaned up a lot and I expect more from RH8. But until then RH will rewrite the code so I cannot see the benefit.

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avi10000Author

Known Participant

>> RH MVPS? Adobe Community Expert is the term. There's no such term as RH MVPS.
Right, now they are called Adobe Community Experts.

>> As soon as you open the topic in RH's editor it is going to rewrite the code.
You know what, I don't care if RH rewrites the code, just as long as RH leaves the result appearance looking nice, i.e., it doesn't smash up the appearance .

>> Go back to your original post here. What is it that is missing in the RH editor? It will not be the cleaner code. RH7 cleaned up a lot and I expect more from RH8. But until then RH will rewrite the code so I cannot see the benefit.

It's been a while now before I gave up in disgust, and went to writing in Word. But I had expected to be able to work in WSYWYG like in MEW or Word, with powerful style management. I expected there to be an easy access Styles side pane. There is not. The numbered lists were not reliable; they restarted when they were not supposed to. Both numbered and bulleted lists get confused about their indentation. It's lucky that I once taught myself MEW with HTML/CSS , so after a short refresher I could go into the HTML view and clean up all the code and make the lists the way they are supposed to be. But since I am at a new client and only working there at 100 hr/month, I had to show some real content output, and fast, and so I had no more time for RH trial and error. So I went back to Word (-- 2007, which I also did not know, but since I am (supposed to be) a Word 2003 guru I knew what I was looking for and that all the features are supposed to exist -- ) and wrote my first drafts with that.

Actually, I am so shocked at RH's bad WSYWGY editor, if I had any choice I would recommend to my client to look for something better (if such a thing exists -- dare I mention Flare...), but since RH is an important TW skill, I want to add it to my skills list. So if my client has recommended using RH, this is a good opportunity to learn RH on their account.

I have a feeling that I am eventually going to make a full circle, i.e., either I won't find cheap/free HTML editor taht does want I want, or even if I do, I will eventually run into the problems you mention, and I will end up writing in raw HTML, just as you say.

Actually, on 2nd thoughts, I also have to be honest with my client, and I don't think they would be happy to hear that a guy who takes over from me at some point, or is hired in addition to me, would have to write HTML/CSS. They would want to hear that there is some type of WSYWYG solution for RH, either internal or external.

Tnx,

- avi

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Avim

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/ is worth a look.

Of course, as with any other editor you are going to lose the RH features such as creating links quickly, apply conditional build tags, using variable, using snippets and so on.

You could use Notepad, the editor of choice for men (with apologies to Roger Nilsson).

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avi10000Author

Known Participant

Thanks, Peter, for giving me the idea about Visual Web Developer.

I checked it out, and it seems to be missing an easy-use side-pane containing all the styles. So it was not designed for TWs. (like Coffee Shop editor, which is great, but it had the same problem.) Need something like Expression Web or DreamWeaver, but without the big price tag.

But thanks, for giving me the idea about Visual Web Developer, coz it made me check it out before I went to the boss to say I needed an editor. He could have said that they already possess MS Visual Web Developer, and I would have looked a fool if I had not already checked it out, coz obviously that was the first thing to check (if I had known about it...).

>> You could use Notepad, the editor of choice for men

ha ha ha :-)
Yes, when I was doing, my Comp. Sci. degree, we used to hear the same type of joke about the programming language, Pascal, we used, like:

"real men use C/Assembly"

and

"assembly programmers play rugby, while Pascal programmers play tiddlywinks" ...

tnx :-)

- avi

Captiv8r

Legend

Hi Avi

LOL, why back when I was a four point... Click here to see the video

I'm sure that Peter and others are probably scratching their heads (as I am) when you mention how bad the editor is and how it's lacking in so many ways. Personally, I find that it accomplishes 99% of what I need or want and I'm quite satisfied with it. However, it wasn't always that way. Particularly when I initially switched from using RoboHelp for Word (where I developed exclusively WinHelp content) to the world of HTML.

You never told us who the mystery female MVP was you mentioned!

Cheers... Rick

M

Moonlion2

Known Participant

Unfortunately the internal editor doesn't work for me (as the screenshots on my Flickr account show: http://flickr.com/photos/76009827@N00/ ) so I have to use Notepad to make any direct HTML changes.

Peter Grainge

Community Expert

Moonlion 2

I know exactly what that problem is. Your choice of font for the editor and / or the fact that you are running it at other than 100%.

Try Courier and Arial. If they don't work, post back and I will look on my home PC where I had the same issue and have more information.

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Moonlion2

Known Participant

Ah, that fixed it.

Of course, how it changed away from 100% remains a mystery (I had to search for how to change it so I absolutely didn't do it on purpose) but it's nice to get away from Notepad.

RoboColum_n_

Legend

To be honest that's a bit like going into a Ferrari garage and asking if a Mesarati is a better car? You may be better directing your query to the HATT list. Better still look at the HAT Matrix.

A

avi10000Author

Known Participant

I would look at it as searching for a *support tool* for RH, not a complete alternative to RH.
But I will take your suggestion.

- avi

J

johnmccallum

Inspiring

avi,

In my opinion, the editor is the heart of RoboHelp. While there are other HTML editors (and some fairly good ones that are cheap) I haven't found any that allow me to edit with the TOC visible, so that I see what my end user will see. This, to me, is where RoboHelp's value comes in. For cheap HTML editors, I have used SpiderWriter and Coffee Cup, which do OK, but when I want to write 'clean' and simple HTML, I just use Notepad.

Yes, there was a browser called Mozilla. It is an open source browser now known as Mozilla Firefox. It is nearly identical to Netscape - at least it produces similar looking output. I think they both adhere a lot more strictly to the W3C standards than IE.

John

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