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

[Jim Owens]

Based on a recent evaluation of TCS, my understanding is that the HTML 
cannot be round-tripped. What's more, certain things you might want in 
your HTML cannot be marked up in Frame. For example, if you want to use 
drop-down hotspots, there's no way to mark them up in FrameMaker; you 
have to modify the HTML topics that were generated from the Frame 
source. These modifications cannot be brought back to Frame. If you 
update your Frame source and regenerate the topics, you have to add the 
drop-down hotspots to the topics all over again.

In fact, as far as I know, any modifications you make to the HTML topics 
are not round-tripped back to your FM files. Basically what you are 
getting in the TCS is a good HTML Help editor that can import FrameMaker 
documents with support for cross-reference, index, and context 
sensitivity markers.

Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.



Rene Stephenson wrote:
> 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
>