FM v. RoboHelp

[Martinek, Carla]

Lin -

When you make your argument, specify your deliverables. That includes
printable PDFs, with TOC, Indexes, and an attractive, readable format
that pleases the customer and shows off the company to its best
advantage.

If RH cannot produce the required deliverables, then it is not the right
tool for the job.  You can try and FORCE it to work, but that wastes
your time and the company's money, and all you end up with is an
inferior product with which nobody is happy.  

My coworker has had to take RH files and create printable output, and
she said that it requires exporting the files out, opening them in Word,
performing a bunch of manual formatting, and then printing.  Oh, and
let's not forget -- if you find something that needs to be changed, you
have to go back to the RH source files, make the change, export the
content out again, open in Word, and reformat again.  Let's hope the
docs are perfect the first time. (Hah!  Like that ever happens!)
Otherwise, the costs saved by keeping RH will soon be vastly
overshadowed by the extra work and pay required to create
printable/readable PDF content.

I would also use the published description of what the products are for
as part of your argument. (These taken directly from the Adobe web
site.)

	Adobe(r) RoboHelp(r) 6 is a complete, flexible, and
user-friendly 
	system for building, managing, and publishing engaging content 
	for help systems and standalone knowledge bases.

	New Adobe(r) FrameMaker(r) 7.2 software delivers an
enterprise-class 
	authoring and publishing solution that combines the simplicity 
	of word processing with the power of XML. Enjoy WYSIWYG
authoring 
	in either a familiar word processing, style-tagging mode or a
fully
	structured environment optimized for the editing and production 
	of valid XML. Take advantage of long-document support that
includes 
	book management features, sophisticated templates, and rich
formatting
	options. Experience built-in support for high-quality printing, 
	the latest Adobe PDF standards, and integration of Scalable
Vector 
	Graphics (SVG). And use the included WebWorks(r) Publisher
Standard 
	Edition 8.0 software from Quadralay to automatically create HTML

	versions of your documents and books.

-Carla
 
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