Skip to main content
jrothlander
Participant
June 29, 2011
Question

New to RoboHelp... can it do this?

  • June 29, 2011
  • 8 replies
  • 1140 views

I am new to RoboHelp.  Actually, I have never used it.  But I need to know if it can handle what I need to do before I invest in it and spend a lot of time trying to figure it out.  I have read through a lot of introductions, tutorials, product overviews, etc. and they all talk about a lot of features that are really nice.  But what I need is VERY simple.  So it seems to be skipped by all of the tutorials, articles, etc.  So I want to find out if RoboHelp can do what I need, which I assume it can because my needs are simple.  But I also want to get some ideas on how best to approach this.

I have a VERY large application with a custom help system.  I want to convert this to RoboHelp.  By large I mean many applications, many millions of lines of text stored is nearly 10,000 individual help screens.  I assume this is large, but maybe it is not compard to the average these days.

Here's the problem.  If I manually enter the information it will take an estimated 24+ months for a team of 25 to 35 contractors or more at a cost of around $5M just to get the help moved over.  That is not within the budget.  However, I can covert the help screens however I wish.  I can convert them to HTML, CSV, TXT, or whatever else I need to.  But there are tags in them for context-sensitive help.  So when a user clicks help on a screen, the help pops up and positions to that page in the help application.  But that about all there is to it.  The help is very simple, no graphics, no styles or anything.  Just .TXT files and context-sensitive tags.  I know RoboHelp can support those.  But can I create some tagged marked-up version of the current files and use those to load into RoboHelp.

The idea is that if we bring this into RoboHelp we will have a solid base to build on going forward and we can add graphics and more advanced feature as time goes forward.  But the old version is what we have today and we need to get it into RoboHelp and converting the pages one at a time is not an option.  We have to do some work to run a program and convert them to what RoboHelp can import and I REALLY need the context tags to be loaded automatically by RoboHelp if possible.  I cannot spend 12-months going in and adding the tags for the context sensitive help.

Now I know that RoboHelp can import many types of files. So my thought is to find the simplest format that has the context-sensitive tag and run a conversion process to create simple text files and generate whatever RoboHelp needs to import.  But what I do not know is what format that is, if I can get the context-sensitive tags to load into RoboHelp.

If RoboHelp supports this out of the box, that would be great.  But I suspect that I would have to run a conversion process to create a format that RoboHelp can import.  Which is no problem at all.  As long as the format is able to be written out in simple text files, I can do it.  But what format and how do get the context-sensitive help to work/load into RoboHelp?

So any suggestions or thoughts would be much apprecaited.  If you have link with a sample or tutorial, that would be perfect.

Best regards,

Jon

    This topic is closed to new replies. Start a new post to keep the conversation going.

    8 replies

    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    June 29, 2011

    Picking on key points...

    PROJECT SIZE

    Assuming the 10,000 individual help screens you refer to are going to translate to 10,000 topics (HTML files) then that is large and above the size I would recommend for an individual RoboHelp project. I would be setting up Merged Help which means you would have several projects but the end user would view them as if they were one. Merged help is described on my site

    You have not said what help output you will be creating and that pretty much depends on where it will reside.

    • If local you could use WebHelp but the Chrome browser is beginning to prevent that being an option as it will not display locally installed webhelp. See Snippets on my site for an explanation. The alternatives are CHMs or AIR help. Both can be merged.
    • If on a server, then you need WebHelp or FlashHelp. The former is more robust.

    CONVERTING TO ROBOHELP

    I am struggling to see where you get your $5M estimate and the need for 24+ months and a team of 25 to 35 contractors. Lets say the workflow is copy/paste the content from one of your screens into a RoboHelp topic and then format it. Say 15 minutes per topic that gives 2500 hours or just over 100 days for one person. The other contractors would be having a wild party so perhaps that's where the cost is going.

    Being serious there must be more to the task than you are telling us and maybe that is important to the reply.

    IMPORTING HTML

    If you can convert the existing content into HTML files that RoboHelp can digest via the Import function, you can import all the files in one folder. That's the theory and I would suggest you do so in batches closing RoboHelp every so often. In Tools > Options tick the option to always clear the cache (the CPD file).

    CONTEXT SENSITIVE HELP

    You are referring to tags. Do you mean bookmarks? Does your application call topics or specific locations in topics?

    RoboHelp can support calls to topics or bookmarks within them. There is information on my site about calling help.

    CONSULTANCY


    I wonder if for a project of this size you are going to need some external consultancy? It is not something I offer as I am a full time employee but I may be able to suggest people depending on where you are based.

    See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

    @petergrainge

    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
    Willam van Weelden
    Willam van Weelden
    Inspiring
    June 29, 2011

    Hi,

    In addition to Peter's excellent reply:

    IMPORTING HTML

    You can use scripting in RoboHelp (8 and 9) to import files. You can also create a script that mass imports HTML files into the project. That can eliminate hours of manual labour.

    CONTEXT SENSITIVE HELP

    You can use context sensitive help in different ways. (See Peter's site.) You can also use the script function to import context sensitivity along with your topics. For instance, if you add the id of every screen in a HTML meta tag, the script could easily create the correct context sensitive help id's based on the info in that tag.

    Greet,

    Willam

    jrothlanderAuthor
    Participant
    June 29, 2011

    William,

    Thanks for your reply.

    I can certainly convert these into HTML.  They are simple in structure and basically have lots of paragraphs and meta-tags to indicate bookmarks.  Most of the individual topic entries are between 25 to 50 lines... 2 or 3 paragraphs.  The paragraphs are marked with a tag sort of similar to HTML.  So converting them into something like the following, would be very easy.  I'm not sure what sort of format I need, but I know it would be easy to convert them into HTML.  If from there I can write a script to mass important them into RoboHelp projects or files or whatever they are called, that would certainly work for me.

    Is it possible for me to simply create the RoboHelp file structure directly?  I know that other 3rd party help builders can read and process the RoboHelp files.  Is it possible for me to just create those files directly?  That would avoid having to important them.  But if importing is simple enough and can be scripted for a mass import, it would certainly be easier to import them.

    Best regards,

    Jon

    <html>

    <table<tr><td>

    <bookmark>file1_entry2_id1234</bookmark>

    <p>

    adadas asd fasd fasd fasd fasd f

    asdf asd fasd fasd fasd fasd fas f

    a asdasd fasd f

    </p>

    <p>

    asdasdfasdfasdf

    asfasdfasdasd

    asdfasdfasdf

    asdasdfasdf

    </p>

    </td></tr></table>

    <table<tr><td>

    <bookmark>file1_entry2_id5678</bookmark>

    <p>

    adadas asd fasd fasd fasd fasd f

    asdf asd fasd fasd fasd fasd fas f

    a asdasd fasd f

    </p>

    <p>

    asdasdfasdfasdf

    asfasdfasdasd

    asdfasdfasdf

    asdasdfasdf

    </p>

    </td></tr></table>

    <html>

    Jon

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices