RE: Frame Maker > Help > Frame Maker?

Subject: RE: Frame Maker > Help > Frame Maker?
From: "Bill Swallow" <wswallow -at- nycap -dot- rr -dot- com>
To: "'Dennis Cremin'" <dpcremin -at- adelphia -dot- net>, "'TECHWR-L'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 23:29:46 -0400

::: I am working in the RoboHelp - Word - FrameMaker triangle
::: myself. We are
::: creating help systems and then single-sourcing into doc
::: format. Problem is,
::: some of the docs are upwards of 250 pages. Word formatting
::: gets a bit
::: unforgiving in longer docs, so we have been moving them
::: into FrameMaker.
::: Process is laborious, and the content sometimes gets out of
::: sync between the
::: HTML and FrameMaker files. There must be a better way...

The problem is, as several have already pointed out, that RoboHelp is not a
single-sourcing tool (no matter how much they tell you otherwise). It just
doesn't work that way. Any time you spend time tweaking output to make it
fit your needs, you're abandoning single-sourcing, as you'll have to perform
the same or more manual cleanup every single time you churn out the output.
There is a better way; get a single-sourcing toolset.

(FWIW, the process used with RoboHelp is called "repurposing", which is
almost like single-sourcing, only it's a one-way deal with any source
modification resulting in a new one-way process.)

Bill Swallow
wswallow -at- nycap -dot- rr -dot- com






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RE: Frame Maker > Help > Frame Maker?: From: Dennis Cremin

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