Re: Webworks or Robohelp

[voxwoman <voxwoman -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I just went through an evaluation of RoboHelp vs WebWorks. We are using Tech
Comm Suite 1, and there were a lot of issues with Frame's "integration" with
RoboHelp (which I am disappointed to read have not been resolved in TC2),
but the deal breaker for us was that we have a language requirement for
Arabic. RoboHelp does not support RTL languages (and neither does
FrameMaker, from what I've heard).

WebWorks does support RTL languages, and will seamlessly convert both Frame
and Word files (we are generating source in Frame and sending that out for
translation, where we will have translated Word files sent back to us).

ePublisher/WebWorks has "entry-level" pricing of about 800 dollars for a
1-year license, and the fee can then be applied to the cost of a "permanent"
license later on.

The latest incarnation of WW is very different than the version bundled with
Frame about 10 years ago, but once you figure it out, it's quite easy and
straightforward to use.

-Wendy




On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 4:18 AM, John Gallagher <johng -at- zyxel -dot- com -dot- tw> wrote:

> 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.
>
> John Gallagher
> Technical Writing & Translation Manager
> ZyXEL, Hsinchu, Taiwan
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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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