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

[Kathy_T_Casey]

Hi Shane

Great to here something straight out of the horses mouth so to speak!

I love RoboHELP and want to continue using it, so it's a relief, after so much mud slinging from other areas, to have even an informal word from Adobe to say that it will be enhanced in the future.

Well done and I look forward to the next instalment.

Regards

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Thanks Kathy,

I am glad that I could finally comment.

I remember when PageMaker was supposedly "dead", but that was how many releases ago? I guess I think of it this way, the only constant in the Universe is change, and well, that could include product plans.

Shane

[Swiggles]

Hi Shane,

I too am very happy that Adobe didn't kill RoboHelp. I'm currently using X5 for 16 different projects. My wish list of features for the next release of RoboHelp include:

1. The ability to automatically create an Eclipse plugin. Maunally editing the toc.xml file for a large problem is a BIG pain.
2. The ability to automatically import my RoboHelp project into FrameMaker, click the print button, and have a book quality manual appear.

S.

PS: A girl can dream, can't she?

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Hi Swiggles,

If you are gonna dream, dream big and dream often! I have forwarded your requests to the product team.

/S

[Guest]

Shane:

If you're taking input, I would like to "second" the requests from Swiggles, and add one more:

3. Please make the next version support full Internationalization, with double-byte support, so we can translate our projects into any language, not just the "Western" languages.

Thanks.

[jdaigle]

Welcome to the RoboHelp Forum, Shane!
Glad to hear support issues are being clarified. As one who teaches RoboHelp, Captivate and Breeze, the information will go a long way to filling in the rumor and information gaps.
Thanx,
john

[LinSoft]

Thanks Shane!

Great to hear something from Adobe about RoboHelp. Teaching and selling RoboHelp to my customers will be a lot simpler from now on. Hopefully this will also take care of Adobe officials (at least in Sweden) not knowing what RoboHelp is...

/Pelle

[Guest]

Hi Shane,

Do you have any idea whether the next release of RoboHelp will support double-byte character sets? My company is currently trying to localize our product for several asian languages and so this is critical for us. I know that a version of RoboHelp (X3 I believe) used to exist for asian languages, but no longer does. If no asian language support is planned for the next version of RoboHelp, we will probably switch to a different help authoring tool. Anyway word you could give us on this would be much appreciated.

Hughes

[Guest]

Hi Shane,

I'm glad to hear that RoboHelp users will get more support. I am currently looking into purchasing RoboHelp and have not been able to get answers to my questions going through your sales or support. I've had an open case for about a week or two. My case number is 4377465. I've spoken to a couple of salespeople who told me I couldn't get my questions answered because I didn't have a support plan (I was trying to get the trial version to work so I could make the pitch to my management) and then they said they would try, but I never got any results.

I also tried your online help. It was no help at all. I followed the steps for several issues only to have them not work. I probably will purchase RoboHelp but only because of the forums that are available. That is where I've been able to find the answers to my questions.

I'm converting from FrameMaker, so it is disappointing that RoboHelp for FrameMaker is no longer available.

Thank you for the update.

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Hi,

That number does not pull up any case for me. Can you verify the number. Please email me offline at shtracy@adobe.com with your name and phone number so I can see if I can find it. Typically, there is no support for a trial installation, but there might be other document around your specific issues.

Thanks

Shane

[Guest]

Shane,

I just joined the forum and am glad to see this topic posted. I work in an area that is no longer offered a support plan. Direct contact with "Adobe support" has proven time-consuming and unsatisfactory. Will Adobe offer increased support along with the new release?

Thanks

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

You should be able to get support via the regular support options. If you are not, please let me know where you are and what Customer Service has told you.

Thanks

Shane

[Guest]

It took about three weeks to find out that Alaska was no longer eligible to participate in a support plan (ours had lapsed) and it was necessary to contact Adobe Customer Service directly. After researching online Help, I tried to do so by phone but was unsuccessful. Then in early June, I sent an email (support ticket #8568458). I received a reply that didn't really answer my question. Either my question was worded poorly or I didn't understand the answer, entirely possible on both counts!

[Shane_T_-_Adobe_TS]

Hi Susan,

I am having a tech look at your case to see if the information was correct or what was going on. You probably had a maintenance contract for RoboHelp which at this time is not renewable. You should be able to purchase a single incident or one of the Bronze/Silver programs.

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

Thanks

Shane

[Bobby_Walker]

Hello Susan,

I have reviewed your case and followed up via email. If you need further clarification, please fee free to reply to the email.

Thank you,

Bobby W
Support Research Specialist
Technical Support
Adobe Systems Incorporated

[tswaters1]

Wohoo !

This post has totally made my day. I've been working with RoboHelp a little over a year and was disgusted to hear that Macromedia decided to sunset it. I just want to say " Thank You " to Adobe for keeping the best-damn help authoring tool around for more updates.... you guys may suck sometimes when it comes to support, but you're in my good books now.

As for requests for product updates, I'm going to say: Fix the bugs.
How ironic that I've had to write a guide in robohelp covering how to use robohelp and all the bugs and quirks i've noticed.

Short list:
1 - PNG Files causing crashes. If saved once and only once in Paint, will cause an application error. Saving twice fixes it

2 - Tracked Changes in word -- I just posted this one earlier today, but robohelp doesn't deal with word tracked changes very well

Then there's the "won't make robohelp crash, but is hard to work with list",

1 - General word imports -- being forced to change all the bullets and numbers to correct "bullets" and "numbers" is a bit frustrating

2 - Better Merged Project support - The ability to link to and and from merged projects would be STELLAR... currently you need to use ../../../../ etc.etc.etc it's rediculous, and you never know if you got it wrong until there's a 404.

3 - More customization for Printed Documentation, such as headers & footers and maybe the ability to make a fancy title page... I'm weary of creating printed documentation because i need to spend an hour formatting to our standards.

4 - Better Table support. Copying rows, columns & cells, currently unsupported. You can copy a full table, but not rows/columns or cells.... Also I'd like to see more word-esque table support, i.e. "Insert column to the right/left", "Insert rows above/below"

5 - Import XLS files.... I've had many headaches trying to do this.

Hmm... that was just off the top of my head..

I wish Adobe all the best for the 2007 version of RoboHelp -- I hope it blows the competition out of the water
( and isn't too expensive to upgrade )

-Tyler Waters

[Peter Grainge]

Hi Tyler

Perhaps I can help with some of the points you raise:

1 - General word imports - See the topic about importing on my site. This problem can be avoided.

2 - Better Merged Project support - The ability to link to and and from merged projects would be STELLAR... currently you need to use ../../../../ etc.etc.etc it's rediculous, and you never know if you got it wrong until there's a 404. - See the topic about merged webhelp on my site. I have no problem creating cross project links.

3 - More customization for Printed Documentation, such as headers & footers and maybe the ability to make a fancy title page... I'm weary of creating printed documentation because i need to spend an hour formatting to our standards. - There is nothing you can do about headers and footers but you can have your own title page. Insert it in the wizard.

4 - Better Table support. Copying rows, columns & cells, currently unsupported. You can copy a full table, but not rows/columns or cells.... Also I'd like to see more word-esque table support, i.e. "Insert column to the right/left", "Insert rows above/below" - Yes copying would be nice but the insert columns and rows icons seem to work well enough.

5 - Import XLS files.... I've had many headaches trying to do this. - Neurofen?

[tswaters1]

Thanks Peter. I think my second suggestion list was "won't make robohelp crash, but is hard to work with list".... sure you can get them working eventually, but you have to wrestle with the RoboHelp project to get it to work right.

MergedProjects I was thinking integrate them all together so you can see the master and all other mergedprojects from the "Select Destination (file or URL)"..... that would take all the guess work out of it. The method on your webpage is great, but only if the user knows about it (sadly, there is no link to www.grainge.com in the robohelp help file... there SHOULD be!) some user unpacks RoboHelp and has no idea how to properly set up the folder structure to make merged projects not such a nightmare.... I think RoboHelp should take care of the hard part.

Working With tables monologue: "I need to insert a row to the bottom of a full (content filled) table so I'll just point the curser down to the bottom row and says "insert row" -- oh what's this? it adds it above the bottom row? well no problem I can cut the bottom row up one... oh what? I can't copy rows? so you mean I have to copy each cell seperatly to clear the bottom row? yeesh. Maybe I'll have more luck inserting a column to the very right.... not so ! It inserts to the left always so I need to copy each cell individually to get the right-most cell free..... boy i sure wish i could insert column to the left/right or insert row above/below.... or maybe could copy cells/rows/columns"

Word Imports. I shouldn't require any extra software of effort to correctly import a word document into RoboHelp. The way it looks on the RoboHelp webpage ( http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/ ) there is a simple arrow from the "import" column to the "create/edit" column.... there should be a squiggly line labelled "fix conversion errors"

[Captiv8r]

Hi Tyler

Regarding the need to add a table cell at the bottom...

Sounds like you may be unaware that you can simply place your cursor in the last cell of the table and press Tab. Voila! A totally new row appears beneath the last row.

Just a thought... Rick

[tswaters1]

Hm! Indeed I am unaware that I could do that... thanks again Rick.
Anyway, I certainly hope my point ("these things should be easier") isn't being lost.

[Guest]

Hi All:

Regarding Tyler's comments that basically address most of my issues, (You GO Tyler!!), I have the following comments to add to the "I hope they add these" features list.

1 - General word imports -- being forced to change all the bullets and numbers to correct "bullets" and "numbers" is a bit frustrating

<<< Even with Peter's solution, it is still, IMHO, FAR from seamless to import a Word 2003 doc and have it convert to HTML properly, including bulleted and numbered styles.

I've finally worked out a method using RoboHelp WinHelp to convert all my Word documents (some as much as 50 pages long), but it is still labor-intensive! (And I have tried converters, I've tried importing from Word straight, from a PDF, and so on, and that took even more time.) Right now, to convert from Word to HTML, I open the document in Word, apply a "conversion template," that I developed. Then, I open the Style chooser in Word and overwrite all the styles in the Word document with the "conversion template" styles. (This template makes bullet and number styles without a bullet or number, as well as some other changes to match my CSS styles in RoboHelp.) I convert all the headings and them compile the processed document in WinHelp. If that works and there are no corrupted tables (my docs are Infomapped), then I generate single-source output to HTML. *Then* I import the HTML doc into the WebHelp project.

I would like the RoboHelp team to look at providing a "clean" method to convert Word docs to HTML or even XML that would keep some formatting (like bulleted styles, tables, and so on), but not port over all the embedded styles and classes in the Word doc that make applying a CSS a pain! A REAL Word-to-RoboHelp built-in filter would be absolutely WONDERFUL. I'd upgrade just for that feature, no kidding.

2 - Better Merged Project support - The ability to link to and and from merged projects would be STELLAR... currently you need to use ../../../../ etc.etc.etc it's rediculous, and you never know if you got it wrong until there's a 404.

<<<< I've used Peter's instructions for Merged WebHelp and it works great, but it's still a pain to copy and paste the URL (or type it) for thousands of files. Yuck. It took days and days to do that in my current project, which has about 10K topics total.

I would really really like a more automatic method to do this, like how I can drag and drop a link in a "regular" non-merged help. Or some feature like being able to browse to the location, maybe for a group of files? I never want to spend a whole week cutting and pasting links again!


4 - Better Table support. Copying rows, columns & cells, currently unsupported. You can copy a full table, but not rows/columns or cells.... Also I'd like to see more word-esque table support, i.e. "Insert column to the right/left", "Insert rows above/below"

<<<No kidding. This would be great great great. How about supporting embedded tables a little better too, particularly when converting over from Word? Again, working with Infomapped documents that have embedded tables requires me to disassemble the embedded table, insert a new table, and then retype (or cut and paste) all the text. Ugh.

Just my two cents. Peter's input has been invaluable (thanks Peter) to work around some of these issues--I couldn't have done it without his help at grainge.org. BUT, I would still like to see an update to RoboHelp address some of these issues. I think that merged WebHelp and converting from Microsoft Word will not go away anytime soon, so it would make my life ever so much easier if they would address these issues.

Diana

[Guest]

Hi,
I am currently using trial version, the official one (Office) should arrive any moment now.

Some observations (may be false, I am happy to get corrected):

1. May be due to MS-Word, but importing Word documents is not reliable. Topics don't get created, images do not appear in the list of images, behaviour may be different on different imports (as I said, might be due to Word, 2003 in my case).
2. Handling multiple items at one time is impossible, be it topics, TOC, import dialogs. Should be added.
3. At least with RH for Word, when importing documents, images being in perfectly valid format for HTML (i.e. .png) do get converted to bitmaps (the quality goes way down). If one does not do the conversion, images do not appear at all in the image list.
3. The size of images, to add an item about images, ought to be imported with the size set in Word. Now, the original size is used, and unnecessary time goes to resizing.
4. There should be a way to "clean" the project. If I import the same document again, all images are duplicated for no reason.
5. If I close a document, it shouldn't be opened automatically. This happens once in a while, especially when importing documents. And if documents may be opened automatically, they could be closed automatically, too (with confirmation, naturally). Closing a document is required to delete it from the project. It is a nuisance to do it manually every time.
6. A refresh should be possible. Currently if one adds topics, a totally new TOC must be created and the added topics have to picked up manually.

[MergeThis]

Ahhhh, where to begin?

I know...I'll send him/her to Peter Grainge's nifty Web site for all things Word. Yeah, that's the ticket...yeah!

Hint: Importing files, into any application, has never been pretty, or easy.


Good luck,
Leon

[HKabaker]

If I were a newcomer to this forum, I might get the sense that some old-timers are taking a somewhat defensive attitude.

As an RH user of more than 5 years (I know, some colleagues go back several years more), I'd like to respond: "Stop whining! You should see the way it used to be!"

By the way, did anyone here ever use WordPerfect or MS Word in the early days?

But I digress. I know it's not easy to accept shortcomings, and there's no reason we shouldn't expect better.

We've had lots of discussion here, and it appears most of us agree that RH needs some serious work in several areas:

--Table editing and manipulation.
--Importing Word documents and stripping out the gobbledygook tags. (This was a big part of the antitrust complaint against MS: They were building in a lot of MS-specific stuff that didn't help and, in fact, interfered with rival applications.)
--Exporting to print formats.
--Accommodating alternative browsers that, for some strange reason, were following html standards in a way that is less forgiving of code variants than IE permits.
--Improved handling of merged projects. (Remember when we couldn't merge projects at all? Ooops, there I go again.)
--An overhaul of the RH "Truecode" structure that stuffs project topics with tags that help the WYSIWYG display but must be stripped on output.

As Tyler said, that's top-of-the-head thinking.

Fraternally,

Harvey