FM v. RoboHelp

[Rene Stephenson]

That particular guide was only about 240 pages, which is about half the size of one of the ones I currently managed as one output of 5 produced using ePub/FM to single-source and do all 5 outputs in less time than I used to spend on 1 CHM and converting to PDF (throught the formatting purgatory required RH>Word>PDF) for the project half its size. Based on that experience, I'd say it takes 4 times as long to do the same amount of work using RH if you have to produce PDF. The thing is, it's a part of EVERY production cycle. With FM, you set it up once and you're done, just handle the page formatting as you grow the content.

Sometimes I'd run into a bug in Word that would cause all sorts of nightmares with formatting, and if you've tried to format anything in Word recently, remember how you have to futz with stuff constantly, going back to check that something you did later didn't "break" some formatting you'd done earlier because of Word's  quirky format interdependencies and autonumbering issues.

Lin Surasky <Lin.Surasky at retalix.com> wrote: See, these are the kinds of numbers I needed. I know there's a time
difference between the two, but how much is the question. Thanks for
helping with that.

I never would have guessed 3-5 days! For how big a guide? 60 pages? 200
pages? (Once it's PDFed, of course.) 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> framers-bounces+lin.surasky=retalix.com at lists.frameusers.com 
> [mailto:framers-bounces+lin.surasky=retalix.com at lists.frameuse
rs.com] On Behalf Of Rene Stephenson
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 12:59 PM
> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Subject: RE: FM v. RoboHelp
> 
> The last time I had to use RH to create printable output, 
> there was a substantial amount of clean-up work involved each 
> time between creating the Word version with all the 
> print-friendly stuff like continuation statements on pages, 
> etc., and then output to PDF and all the security stuff. For 
> a single user guide, I would spend 3 to 5 full days just 
> getting it into PDF from RH. Time is money. You could 
> estimate the amount of time, factor that by your wage (plus 
> the standard fudge factor for dealing with program bugs and 
> crashes), and then factor that by the number of releases per 
> document quarterly. That should be staggering enough to make 
> your case clear to the QA and management mindset.
> 
> Rene
> _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> You are currently subscribed to Framers as lin.surasky at retalix.com.
> 
> Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com.
> 
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to
> framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com
> or visit 
> http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/lin.surask
> y%40retalix.com
> 
> Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. 
> Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
>