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Subject:Re: RoboHelp for FrameMaker From:"Brian Jennings" <BrianJennings -at- cougarmtn -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Wed, 18 Feb 2004 18:45:30 -0700
Hi,
We have been using RH 4 FM pretty much since it came out. We are using
FrameMaker and previously we used Robohelp for the online version of the
help. I managed a way to import my Frame files into RH but it was very
limited and changes in the newer versions (post 2002r2) made it not work
at all.
I was considering WWP for this task, but when RH 4 FM came out I was
intrigued since I was already using RH and I liked the product(I should
emphasize that RH 4 FM in no way interfaces with RH. It is a completely
seperate product). As a comparison, I think these products are very
similar and I'm not familiar enough with WWP to know what all the
differences are, but the primary thing I noticed was just usability, and
the output feature is very robust. You could create a number of different
outputs from the same project.
We are using RH 4 FM to go directly from FM files that we also use for
printed guides and for PDFs. We also use conditional text and inset text
for single sourcing purposes.
So far I have been very pleased with the product and the way that it
interfaces with FrameMaker. It provides the capability of integrating many
online features with really minimal set up and a clean conversion that
means we can create a true single source.
Basically the product does almost everything we need it to do to
effectively turn our FM source files into online .chm files. The only
thing it doesn't do is support merging of help files and as a result I am
still using RH for the purpose of merging .chm's I create with RH 4 FM.
One of my biggest concerns out of the gate was the stability of the
product and the support. So far I feel pretty good about the stability and
I have great confidence in the support and in the future of the product.
Without any more information about what you want to do I'm not sure what
else to say except that I'd definately recommend giving it a close look if
you want to single source from FM.
