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JasonKl-G1NNVU
Participating Frequently
December 27, 2006
Question

RoboHelp 2 MediaWiki

  • December 27, 2006
  • 8 replies
  • 2381 views
Hello,

I thought the folks on this forum would be interested to know that we have published a RoboHelp 2 Media Wiki conversion tool. RoboHelp2Wiki is a MediaWiki extension under GNU General Public License 2.0.

RoboHelp2Wiki V 0.9 converts Macromedia RoboHelp Topics to MediaWiki pages. For this release, most of the structural and object elements are converted to proper wiki counterparts. Stylesheets and javascripts are mostly discarded. Display related markups, such as font size, colors, appearances, are not retained in most cases.

More information can be found at http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension:RoboHelp2Wiki

Background on why we did this can be found on my blog @ http://muddybranch.thejkgroup.com/

We are very interested in feedback and other comments!!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    8 replies

    H
    HKabaker
    Inspiring
    November 5, 2007
    Jason,

    Thanks. It happens that your site is flagged as a discussion forum, and, even though it's in the Business/Technical category, my Internet Police are blocking access.

    I have a channel for appealing -- they look at site-by-site requests -- and it may take a day or two.

    The question is not so much about the Wiki as my need for some basic education on how and why RH XML output is used. Then I can start getting a handle on Wiki Servers, etc.

    Harvey
    J
    JasonKl-G1NNVUAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 5, 2007
    Harvey,

    We picked RH XML as it was the easiest to parse when converting to another format. Our source code is in the download, which may help in the learning process.

    Jason
    H
    HKabaker
    Inspiring
    October 26, 2007
    I'm starting to look for information on why and how I might use XML output -- how and where it's deployed, how the end user gets there, what's needed to open it, and strategies for building the output to take best advantage of the form.

    RoboHelp2Wiki sounds interesting, and I want to try it.

    RH online help has some basic how-to instructions and explanation, but I need more to be able to understand how to use RH2Wiki.

    Any recommendations?

    Harvey
    J
    JasonKl-G1NNVUAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 5, 2007
    Hello Harvey,

    I have tried to post all the information required to run and understand RoboHelp2Wiki on it's MediaWiki Extensions page:
    http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RoboHelp2Wiki



    Was there something specific that you needed?

    johndaigle
    johndaigle
    Legend
    November 5, 2007
    Hey, Jason.
    Just wondering if you've tested on RoboHelp 7 yet?
    Thanx,
    john
    John DaigleAdobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate InstructorNewport, Oregon
    Peter Grainge
    Community Expert
    Peter GraingeCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 25, 2007
    http://www.thejkgroup.com/RoboHelp2Wiki-1.htm
    Use the menu (bottom right) to mark the Best Answer or Highlight particularly useful replies. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here.
    I
    IanBD
    Participant
    October 25, 2007
    I seem to be lagging behind the trend -- again.
    Oh well, nevermind. Does anyone know where I can find the robohelp2wiki.zip file? The mediwiki page has lots of information, but I cannot see a link to a download for the tool.
    A
    Anonymous
    January 31, 2007
    This is fantastic! Now we need a Frame2Wiki...
    J
    JasonKl-G1NNVUAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 30, 2007
    RoboHelp2Wiki Version 0.9 working with Robohelp Version 6.

    As far as we can tell there were no changes to the XML tags or the directory structures using Version 6 XML Output handler. The project meta data in the project files are also practically the same. I did test the new user defined global variables feature worked and they worked and converted correctly to MediaWiki.

    Jason
    EileenPalsson
    EileenPalsson
    Inspiring
    January 10, 2007
    Hello,

    My team might be very interested in this tool (or a similar one). We have a lot of internal information that we have maintained for years as a help project. Lately we have been itching to convert it to a wiki, in order to make it more accessible and easier to update. However, we wouldn't like to lose the formatting. Maybe we'll wait for the next version. :-)

    Best regards,
    Eileen
    J
    JasonKl-G1NNVUAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 14, 2007
    Hello Eilleen,

    Some of our formatting decisions were done to make it easier for people to edit the Wiki once converted. For example, we simplified the table conversions to remove complex formatting avoid inside formatting, nested tables, split inner rows/columns into multiple cells, etc. MediaWiki does not encourage the use of sophisticated table structures instead it encourages simple layouts to better enable collaboration. This was fine for us, as our goal was to get content to the right people with tools to edit and contribute.

    Why not try converting one set of internal information to the Wiki as a test and see if your users miss the extra formatting. If they do, let us know what is important and we will see what we can do. Or if you like, please feel free to modify the code and we will validate, test, and re-release.

    Regards,

    Jason

    R
    Roger_N
    Inspiring
    December 27, 2006
    Jason -

    Hello, and welcome to the RH forums. I can't tell you how on time this is. While they might not know it, it is a solution many have been asking for, for some time now.

    For those wondering, a wiki is: "A website or similar online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively." - source. It is a knowledgebase, much like RH's Webhelp, that allows for user contributions, version tracking, and more. MediaWiki is probably the first, and was developed specifically for Wikipedia.

    I've been asking on the http://www.wikimatrix.org/ forums this fall about importing whole directories of generated files (RH output files, to be specific) for either MediaWiki or Twiki. Got a few answers, all requiring master's degrees in wiki development. I wasn't ready for a whole new discipline. I figured I'd tackle it when I got there.

    So, it is the large-scale answer to those help authors who ask, "How can my clients add content to the finished RH knowledgebase?". Once converted and imported into your existing MediaWiki project, (using Jason's tool, of course), it is no longer a Robohelp project, but part of the wiki... All subsequent editing occurs within the wiki itself, although it does look like Jason's thinking about subsequent RH uploads as well.

    I really like the image history capabilities, and being able to follow changes using the RSS feeds on the recent changes page. And yes, Jason, any further developments will be heralded and appreciated; comprehensive markup, version control and GUIs are all great.

    Nice work sir, and an outstanding contribution for the content management and single-sourcing crowd...
    J
    JasonKl-G1NNVUAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    January 14, 2007
    Roger,

    Thank you for the kind words.

    I would like to add the natural connection between RoboHelp and MediaWiki to your excellent summary of Wiki’s. Both are topic based providing a straight-forward 1-1 match. In contrast, many Microsoft Word documents (or any text document) first need to be transformed from a “document” into “topics within a document”. I have found when importing documents to RoboHelp, I need to do a lot of preliminary work in determining which header level is the right starting point and then correcting the exceptions.

    Regards,

    Jason
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