roundtrip documentation and help (Framemaker/Robohelp - chicken or egg?

[Rene Stephenson]

I would:
d) Buy the current Adobe Technical Communicator Suite, just a $900 upgrade with ANY previous license for FM or RH.

...because the new RH and FM8 work together seamlessly. As I understand it, you don't have to roundtrip stuff back and forth through MIF anymore. You just set up your RH template, point it to the FM source, make all your edits in FM, and as the content evolves in FM, so does your Help output. Just regenerate the RH project as needed.

;-)

 Rene L. Stephenson



----- Original Message ----
From: Ben Hechter <bhechter at yahoo.com>
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 11:07:17 AM
Subject: Re: roundtrip documentation and help (Framemaker/Robohelp - chicken or egg?

Hi All,

Competent in Framemaker but new to Robohelp, with the following question:

If you had to design roundtrip documentation and help (Framemaker/Robohelp) for a constantly evolving product, would you:

a) begin in Framemaker and export to Robohelp
b) begin in Robohelp and export to Framemaker
c) prototype in both and iterate as you go

Certainly interested in tools integration war stories from the battlefront, but even more interested in the information design perspective...

...potential benefits of the chunking constraint of starting with help first (to keep the user guide tight), vs. needing to hammer down expanded user guide content into help topics.

Any and all opinions most welcome!

Ben

Ben Hechter
objectives.ca
Vancouver BC
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