RoboHelp Future and Support

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Hi everyone,

There have been some questions/conversations on the forums about the future of Adobe RoboHelp and its Technical Support. More information will be coming, but I wanted to pass this information along.

Adobe will continue to support and develop RoboHelp as the leading authoring and publishing solution for creating online help and knowledge base systems. The next release for RoboHelp is scheduled for the first half of 2007.

RoboHelp is the perfect compliment to Adobe’s portfolio of solutions for technical communications and eLearning. The combination of RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate, Acrobat 3D, Authorware and Breeze provide a complete solution for this market.

Technical Support for Adobe RoboHelp is stronger than ever. Adobe has increased the number of support technicians not just in North America but in Europe and in Asia Pacific for all levels of support. If you are finding that your issue is not being resolved I would appreciate the case number of your call into Technical Support.

Support plans for RoboHelp can be found at the following link.

http://www.adobe.com/support/programs/robohelp/index.html?tab:plans=1

Thank you for your ongoing support of Adobe RoboHelp.

Shane Tracy
WW Product Support Manager – RoboHelp
Adobe Technical Support

[Peter Grainge]

That's one ageist comment Harvey!!

Personally I wasn't so much defending RoboHelp as offering up some help to deal with the points raised until such time as they are addressed.

[Guest]

RoboHelp needs to be re-architected from the ground up. The thing is crash-prone and slow as molasses. After waiting seven months for the update, I wonder if it won't be just the same OLD RoboHelp with a few minor bug fixes thrown in.

In all seriousness, why doesn't Adobe just buy FLARE and market it as an upgrade the following morning?

[Captiv8r]

Hi B. Engle

Why doesn't Adobe just buy Flare? Probably because the Madcap folks aren't interested. I guess my question would be that if you feel Flare is so superior, why are you posting here? Why not just move to Flare and have it done?

Personally, I find that as long as you abide by best practices and use RoboHelp on a decent PC, it's very stable and never slow. The fact you are reporting these behaviors makes me wonder if you aren't possibly attempting to edit projects while on a network share. If this is the case, moving the projects locally normally introduces gobs of stability.

Cheers... Rick

[mommacat2]

Our office has been following the issue of RoboHelp's future for sometime now. We are avid supporters of RoboHelp and would like to continue to use it and were please to read recent posts in this forum about a new release is in the works.

Since we currently have a 3-year Maintenance/subscription plan for RoboHelp that is due to expire in Feb of 2007 we requested a quote to renew our maintenance plan. However, we were told by the vendor that their Adobe rep said that Adobe isn’t offering support/maintenance for Robohelp anymore. They said that means that the product is going to be discontinued and/or it’s going to be rolled into another product offering.

We feel like we're on a roller coaster: it's being phased out; no it's being supported and is working on a new release; no it's not being supported. Who should we believe? Please Help. Thank you.

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum Mommacat2.

Someone has got their facts very wrong. When did your vendor last speak to the rep as that information is way out of date.

RoboHelp is not being phased out and there is active beta testing under way right now.

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Hi mommacat2,

Adobe will no longer offer maintenance on Robohelp, but support contracts are still available. On 9/25, Adobe dropped maintenance on all products going forward except for Platinum level I believe.

Information about Robohelp support plans can be found at the following URL.

http://www.adobe.com/support/programs/robohelp/index.html?tab:plans=1

Adobe is also still tweaking the levels of support so there is a possibility that Gold level will be available for Robohelp in the future.

Thanks!

Shane

[mommacat2]

Thanks Peter: I understood that the vendor spoke to the rep two days ago, but I will find out for sure. Really glad to hear that RoboHelp is not being phased out, which leads into my response to Shane.

Thank you Shane: As far as the issue on the maintenance plan, and just so we are talking about the same thing, we are referring to the maintenance aka subscription plan (as referenced here: http://www.adobe.com/support/service/subscription/) as opposed to a support plan. Our team is experienced in RoboHelp development and have never taken advance of the support plans. We have however, been purchasing RoboHelp subscription plans since as far back as I can remember. It appears that Adobe/Macromedia is still offering subscription plans for Flash. If a new Robohelp version is in the works, all the more reason for wanting and having a subscription plan! Looks like ours will expire just prior to a new version release ; (

We are a Government agency and it's really difficult if not impossible to purchase an upgrade within a current fiscal year when the $$ hasn't been set aside for that year, which is done a year in advance. And as we all know, there is no crystal ball when it comes to a new version or when it will be released. With subscription plans it's all done in advance and you know you're covered.

So, RoboHelp will be around but with no subscription plan. Well that's part good news! Thanks for your responses!!

[CRO1]

Hello All,

Good news about RoboHelp. Two things I would like to see in the next version.

1. A Format Painter, as in Word.
2. Like Madcap, the ability to place topics beside each other, giving the users to easily copy and paste applicable text.

Cheers,

[RoboWizard]

Hi CR01

1. A Format Painter, as in Word.

Give the following a try. Using any "in line" formatting you want, set up some text. Now click inside the area where you choose the style to apply. With that text selected, type a new name and press the Enter key. See if this is what you are referring to.

2. Like Madcap, the ability to place topics beside each other, giving the users to easily copy and paste applicable text.

Hmmm, Madcap. Yes, the same guys that gave RoboHelp the frowned upon KADOV tags! (Sorry John) Just couldn't resist a bit of teasing there. While you can't display topics side by side, here is a possible workaround you haven't thought of. From the Project Explorer pane, open a topic. Now open a topic from the TOC composer. Now open even a third different topic from the Index composer. You can now pretty easily switch between three different topics in entirely different folder locations. Click the Project tab, note where the highlight is and double-click. Back to the TOC tab, note the highlight and double-click. Back to the Index tab, note where the highlight is and double-click! While it's not remotely suggested that a side by side wouldn't be useful, maybe it's the next best thing until we see it.

You also may not know that you can split the RoboHelp HTML WYSIWYG editor into two or more editing areas for long topics. Maybe you need to keep the topic header visible while working on segments lower down in the same topic. To do this, hover your mouse pointer just above where the vertical scroll bar appears. It should transform into a double arrow. One head points up and one head points down. Once this happens, click and drag down to split the editor screen! The trick is sometimes to get things put back. To do this, you often have to move the cursor left a bit so you aren't actually ON the area you were first on. Now you would be on the divider line between the areas. Once there, click and drag UP until the split is no longer there.

Hope this helps... Rick

[CRO1]

Hello Rick,

Thank you for your reponses.

With respect to the information in point #2 - I clearly understood and I am appreciate the tips.

With respect to the information in point #1 - Sorry, I completely don't get it. Can you please explain it to me like I am a six- year old.

From my point a view: Assuming I have two paragraphs one Normal 12pt the other a bulleted list. In Word, I can highlight paragragh one, click the Format Painter icon and apply the style to paragraph two. In Robohelp to change the style I need to select the appropriate option from the Apply Style drop-down list.

This is not a big issue, but I am curious how your tip from point 1 would mimic the Format Painter feature. No rush, just something I would like to know.

Cheers,

[RoboWizard]

Hi again CR01

Hmmm, it's quite possible that I'm simply misunderstanding exactly how the "Format Painter" actually works in Word. Admittedly, I tend to avoid using Word if I can at all, so it's quite likely I'm misunderstanding how it works.

Yes, using the method I outlined, you would indeed have to select a style from the drop-down list of styles. I simply find that the ability to create these "on the fly" styles is way cool and can be very helpful. Particularly since you can simply format the text as desired right there on the page, without opening dialog after dialog just to tweak things here and there.

So if I missed the mark in my understanding, I truly apologize. Wasn't trying to steer you wrong.

Now, for the other part. If you want the development staff to be aware of these suggestions (and they sound good) you need to consider using the WishForm. You can view the WishForm by clicking this magickal linik.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

Hi Diana

Information Mapping is a brilliant technique in Word but it is not best suited to HTML. Yes it can be done but it requires a little more effort and certainly it will make any converter grumpy.

If you want to know what is coming in the next version of RoboHelp, you could sign up for the Beta testing. Then if that isn't what you want, you can provide feedback that gets to the developers. Adobe are being responsive on the suggestions being made.

I don't understand your comment about cutting and pasting long link paths. If you have followed my method, that just is not necessary. You also mention "Or some feature like being able to browse to the location, maybe for a group of files?" Being able to browse to the location is exactly what I describe. Contact me offline if you want as it is outside the scope of this thread.

You've asked for "... more word-esque table support, i.e. "Insert column to the right/left", "Insert rows above/below". Select a column or row and right click. There's an insert row / column option. If you go to View | Toolbars there's a table toolbar with icons to do that.

[MergeThis]

Diana:

Re: mergedProjects links.

The thing you need to keep in mind is that if the external (external to the current child, that is) topic you're linking to is not on your machine or is not in a folder under the "merge" projects folder, RoboHelp cannot assume that you want a relative path to that topic.

That is, to insert a link to child2 from child1 in a merged project under the C:\xyzmerge folder, the child2 project must on your machine and in the correct folder structure, such as:

C:\xyzmerge\child1
C:\xyzmerge\child2

Thus, RH knows that the link path will be "href=../child2/mytopic.htm." We are 7 writers working on 42 child projects based on Peter's pseudo-master project model, and the only time anybody comes up with broken links is when they attempt shortcuts (don't copy the target folder to their machine, copy content from another writer that was created outside the aforementioned project structure, etc.).

BTW, you could use a good utility such as FAR to find these bad links and automate the removal of extra "../" targets, and/or Xenu to find bad links only.

As to Format Painter: I've used it extensively in Word, and I've found that the usual process is not to click the icon and reformat one element. To the contrary, I've usually been double clicking the icon to reformat multiple elements with the selected style (oh, don't tell me you didn't know about that trick?). Yes, I've requested that very same feature from RH6. However, until then, doing multiple reformats can be accomplished with an intelligent use of the Edit > Replace option in True Code or the RH Multi-File Find and Replace (klunky, but effective).

Good luck,
Leon

[MergeThis]

Ooops!

I meant:

C:\xyzmerge\projects\child1
C:\xyzmerge\projects\child2


Good luck,
Leon

[Guest]

Re: cutting and pasting long links .././../../.

Really sorry that somehow I missed the instructions for the linking for the merged Webhelp, but I did. There wasn't a "browse" function allowed where I linked up my processes.

I will go and look at the instructions again, because I sure don't want to do it that way again.
Cheers!

Diana

[brian_c_p]

It's nice to hear that Adobe is going to keep developing RoboHelp. I am looking at revamping a few projects, which will probably include converting them from Word-based help to HTML help, and have been trying to find the best tool to use to do this. Is there an available list of features that the developers are planning to include in the new release? When/where should I be looking for more information regarding the release date?

I haven't been using it for very long, but here's a brief wishlist for HTML help: (also submitting through the Feature Request form)
1. Secondary window support - This is going to be critical for my upcoming projects. I know about the Related Topics workaround, but the WYSIWYG editor keeps changing my code, so it isn't practical to use at the moment. If this is the best method to use for secondary windows, I'd like to see it incorporated into the hyperlink creation dialog. On a related note, it would be nice if the WYSIWYG editor would just leave hand-inserted code alone.

2. Editing Window Properties - Why are the dimensions for secondary windows restricted to such a small area? The preview of the window layout shows the default size and location of the window, but it should also include what the window will look like (i.e. show the TOC pane/buttons/scrollbars if they are going to be included).

3. Reusable Text - Basically, I have a line of text that needs to be included in many different places in a project and will be updated periodically. I'd like to be able to change the parent line and have all of the child lines update automatically to match. The only other place I've encountered this is in Flare (they call it snippets).

4. Better Map ID Interface - It would be really nice to be able to add map IDs directly from the Topic Properties dialog the way you can in RoboHelp for Word, instead of having to go to a separate window to do it. Furthermore, the Edit Map ID dialog isn't particularly intuitive to use. The topic list on the right should indicate which topics have map IDs assigned to them.

That's what I have off the top of my head - it's not comprehensive, but (aside from #1) the general idea is that there are a lot of things that you can do in the current version, but you sometimes have to jump through hoops to make it happen. I'd like to see these things improved in future releases.

- Brian

[tswaters1]

Yes! I completely agree with #4.

The current MapId interface is such a pain I've opted to manually editing the source files for the mappings: BSSCDefault.h & [projectname].ali... Unforuntately RoboHelp, upon saving a project, will recreate these files, sometimes with adverse orders so I always keep a handy "alphanumeric sorter" handy so I can easily keep track of everything........ Another idea along those lines would be to include something in the topic listings screen, similar to showing if a topic is in the TOC or not -- I'd like to see if a topic has been mapped or not.

I like #3 too -- I've got something similar in one of my projects. In the end, I just ended up using a template with header/footer to keep everything like -- not nearly as powerful a tool as you're recommending but it got my job done (I was lucky enough to have the same text at the footer of the page).

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Brian,

Don't expect Adobe to publicly announce what is in RH6 just yet. It wouldn't be very good business sense when there are competitors around. If you want to know what is currently part of the beta test version you can sign up for this but you'll be bound by a NDA so you'll have to sacriface your first born if you break it. The release date for RH6 is also a closely guarded secret but it is expected to be sometime around mid-2007.