Change workflow to use FM and RH together?

[Jeff Coatsworth]

Easy as pie - use conditional text in your FM docs for the US/UK parts - use RH to import your FM content for help builds or get TCS to link your FM source to a RH project. Continue to use FM for making good-looking PDFs.
Lots of resources for doing this on the Adobe Forums & TCS blog pages and on the TCS Google Group mailing list and to a lesser extent the HATT mailing list.

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Terri Schultz
Sent: August-08-13 4:29 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Change workflow to use FM and RH together?

Background:

My department uses FrameMaker 11, unstructured, and RoboHelp 10.

We do user's manuals in FrameMaker (one version for the US and one version for the UK) as separate books; minimal use of variables and/or conditional text. These docs are made available to customers as PDFs. I've used FM for 15+ years and consider myself an average FM user, not a power user. I used to use variables at a previous job, but my current job/co-workers don't use variables/conditional text.

We do help files in RoboHelp, one help project for the US and one help project for the UK.

There are many smaller/ancillary documents done in FM, InDesign, and or Word. These docs are made available to customers as PDFs. I consider myself a beginner/basic RoboHelp user. I use RoboHelp, but it is mostly editing content and applying pre-existing styles, etc.

The powers-that-be don't see that the information is the same (or mostly the same) between the help and the docs (I am trying to convince them that this is the way it is). One issue that is *always* raised is that the docs have pictures/screenshots/images and the help doesn't. There are also discussions about using MindTouch to deliver information to customers; I don't know if that means that we would stop using FM and RH.

Questions:

1. I know that we could (possibly) have one set of FM files that could be used to provide a US document and a UK document. I don't know *where* to start to make this happen. I don't have any authority to spend money and there is no budget to pay for consulting. I am looking for free advice/suggestions where to find out how to do this.

2. I believe we could either use our FM files to create help, or use our help files to create docs.    As with #1, I want to know where to learn how to do this.

I'm not looking for theory/big picture ideas. I need some nuts-and-bolts, how-to advice. At the very least, I want to show that we could gain some efficiency if we stop maintaining one set of FM source files for the US and another set for the UK.

I hope this makes sense.

Thank you for any and all suggestions!

Terri


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