[Framers] Slightly OT: Standalone Robohelp 2017?

[Robert Lauriston]

I'm not sure if RoboHelp can output a commenting-enabled PDF directly,
but you could enable commenting with Acrobat Pro. Or you could output
to Word and turn on Track Changes.

You could also generate a Word doc before you start revising the
content, then generate another when you're done, and use Word's
Compare Documents feature to compare the two and generate a third file
with change markup.

On Fri, Apr 6, 2018 at 9:17 AM, tammyvb <tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc.com> wrote:
> Warning using voice recognition as I walk my dog so pardon the typos but my concern is  If I work directly in robo help 2017 how on Earth do I keep track of the changes and the markups that I make if I make changes in the content which I'm going to have to do to up to update it what can I produce from rh 2017 for editing. Does it produce A PFd that my editors can mark up I don't know anything about the mark up capabilities when using standalone robo help. I know that in flare I can produce a pdF that can be marked up and using FM to E pub obviously I've got a PDF option as well that's a big concern for me can someone clarify that thank you
>
>
> Sent from Samsung Galaxy smartphone.Pardon the typos!
> -------- Original message --------From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com> Date: 4/6/18  10:08 AM  (GMT-07:00) To: "An email list for people using Adobe FrameMaker software." <framers at lists.frameusers.com> Subject: Re: [Framers] Slightly OT: Standalone Robohelp 2017?
> I don't believe the source format has changed significantly since RH7.
> You can get 30-day trials of RoboHelp and Flare to verify that they
> can read it.
>
> Flare was superior to RH9 in every way except FrameMaker integration.
> I don't think the balance of power has changed much since. If they're
> buying something new I'd say switch to Flare.
>
> By Adobe/ePub do you mean FrameMaker + ePublisher Pro? That's a very
> powerful combination but I've never gotten the sense that it has much
> market share. Migrating from RoboHelp to FrameMaker would be a lot
> more work than just opening the existing project in RH2017 or
> importing it into Flare. You'd need to publish the RoboHelp project to
> Word, import that into FrameMaker, and clean up the formatting.
>
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2018 at 8:39 AM,  <tammyvb at spectrumwritingllc.com> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have a new client who is currently developing .chm help using RH 7. They
>> want to go to HTML5 and get w/ the times. I have several questions about
>> this:
>>
>>
>>
>> 1.      Can projects that were .chms in RH7 somehow be brought in to RH 2017
>> to be updated?
>> 2.      Is standalone Robohelp still as viable for producing OLH as it was
>> in the early 00s?
>> 3.      Is file compare possible in RH 2017? I know it once was in older
>> versions but now?
>>
>>
>>
>> I personally am pushing for either Flare or Adobe/ePub (and even less so
>> Adobe FM to RH output either with the built-in function in Adobe fM 12+, or
>> FM to integrated RH).
>>
>>
>>
>> Right now, the current writer is the RDS in the whole process where she
>> produces the OLH files, takes screen shots of the files that need editing,
>> manually marks up the files w/ stickies for her editors, and then
>> incorporates these edits, and then passes off the edited material again
>> marked up manually to her counterpart in Japan and they both produce their
>> OLH based on the edited/approved material and then pass of the .chms to the
>> developers to incorporate in to the Software project and then finally
>> release the SW. Yep . . .take a breath.
>>
>>
>>
>> At a minimum, I want to be able to somehow get the old .chm projects in to a
>> new tool so that I don't have to retype everything and I want to be able to
>> have a way to visually mark where files have changed for both the SMEs and
>> my Japanese counterpart. (Yes, I want to suggest just going w/ a translation
>> company, but that is not an option as that would basically put the Japanese
>> author out of work and that would be an uncool thing to suggest as a new
>> consultant.)
>>
>>
>>
>> For soooooooooooooooo many reasons, I am pushing Flare or Adobe/ePub (my
>> first choice), but as is my client's prerogative, they want to investigate
>> standalone RH 2017 first and go from there.
>>
>>
>>
>> I am just really open to opinions, suggestions, comments, etc. about
>> standalone RH vs. another tool, keeping in mind all the issues that I want
>> to solve - not being the RDS in the project (with HTML5 the SW can go out
>> even before the OLH is done), the ability to provide hard-copy for edits (as
>> in a PDF to my SMEs and NOT sticky notes attached to screen grabs), the
>> ability to compare files (as w/ change bars in FM which can be carried over
>> in to the PDFs for editing), having a truly controllable development
>> interface (as in Flare's almost WYSIWYG or Adobe FM's true WYSIWYG to ePub
>> approach). . .
>>
>>
>>
>> I know standalone RH >>USED<< to own the market, but from what I have seen
>> over these past 5 years or more is not nearly as much - either Flare or
>> Adobe/ePub. The number of inquiries/recommendations I have seen for RH have
>> just plummeted.