Hi bm2i
You know, it just really baffles me how fickle folks can be.
I guess I can only compare it to a person receiving the unwanted
news that they have a possibly fatal illness. Just when they
actually need the support of all their friends, they stop coming
around. So the comment about "jumping ship" strikes me as odd. It
seems that everyone feels that even if the product were being
"sunset", it will suddenly crash and burn and take all your
existing projects with it. This simply isn't true. The only thing
that would make RoboHelp possibly stop working, is Windows Vista.
And Vista won't be available for many months to come. And even if
Vista breaks RoboHelp, it's quite unlikely that it will be widely
adopted in a timely fashion. A major reason is the hardware
horsepower it will take to run it. So I don't see it being
immediately adopted. Heck, even if RoboHelp were rendered useless,
the source files can easily be ported to other systems.
If you had asked this question as recently as two months ago,
the answer would have been that indeed it does appear RoboHelp has
been sunset. Macromedia acquired eHelp and promptly laid off the
RoboHelp development staff. Seems surreal and strange that a
company would do that in light of the popularity of RoboHelp, but
hey, companies make some really bizarre decisions sometimes. Often
(as in this case) it makes you question the sanity of those in
charge.
The good news here is that Adobe apparently sees value left
in the product. They have been indicating that they wish to develop
it further.
So, if you must, believe all the Chicken Little's out there
and run screaming as if the world were ending and jumping into
unknown murky waters. For me, I've stuck by the product and fully
intend to continue doing so. I should also mention that I train
users on RoboHelp. If this aspect is any indication, there has been
absolutely NO decline in demand for classes from what I see.
Sincerely... Rick
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