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This post was made my Paul Mueller on the wwp-users list after a comparison
by Paul of RH and eP. Please note that I have no affiliation with Paul and I
am not offering my personal opinion on this topic. I am simply passing on
what another user experienced when comparing the two products.
I have recently been helping a client use an ePublisher type workflow with
RoboHelp and FrameMaker lately (they chose the tools, so ePub was not an
option). There are several quirks with RoboHelp that limits several options
in your output. You have much more control with ePublisher. For example,
getting the TOC automatically generated completely, the way you want it,
just doesn't quite work in RoboHelp, so you have some manual TOC maintenance
with RoboHelp. Setting filenames in RoboHelp is also very badly done (if
you do it for one topic, you must do it for all topics.and then RoboHelp
ignores topic break settings by headings and relies ONLY on filename markers
to break topics). DropDown sections are also not as well managed in
RoboHelp.
ePublisher can be a little pricey, but you get the complete control over
your output that you often want and need.
Paul Mueller
UserAid (Delivering information when and where users need it)
713.668.7199 | <http://www.useraid.com> www.useraid.com
Tammy Van Boening
Owner/Principal
Spectrum Writing, LLC
www.spectrumwritingllc.com
info -at- spectrumwritingllc -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+info=spectrumwritingllc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of John Gallagher
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 2:19 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Cc: John Gallagher
Subject: Re: Webworks or Robohelp
I would also like to know people's opinions on this. We recently bought
Tech Comm Suite 2 that bundles Frame 9 with Robohelp 8. We wanted to
upgrade from Frame 7.1 (with Web Works Publisher 2003), but we found
that RoboHelp 8 did not play well with Frame 9 at all. These are some of
the problems we found:
1. RoboHelp crashed FrameMaker when we generate or update a RoboHelp
project.
2. After creating a RoboHelp template, the template became corrupt and
crashed every time we tried to open one of its projects or created a new
project.
3. RoboHelp also corrupted the FrameMaker source files so they could no
longer be used in RoboHelp, even for a blank project.
4. In FrameMaker, we use "Not-WH" (hyphen in between) as a conditional
text name, but this was converted to "Not_WH" in RoboHelp (underscore in
between).
5. It wouldn't hide the Table Continuation variable. From adobe's help:
"Apply relevant conditional text tags to suppress variables that
shouldn't appear in online format. For example, you can suppress the
Table Continuation variable in table headers for tables that break
across pages in the FrameMaker documents." However, this doesn't work!
Even if you mark them out using Not-WH, it still displays! Change one to
Not-WH, right-click it and use Copy Special to copy only the conditional
text settings. Then replace by pasting across the book.
5. Hiding graphics in tables by conditional text left huge blank spaces.
We contacted support, googled solutions and reinstalled the suite but
nothing worked.
We also tested ePublisher and that played real well with our Frame (9)
files, but that's USD 2,600 a pop.
What have other people's experiences been? Please cc me if you reply to
the list as I'm on digest.
Many thanks.
Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com
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Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com
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