Re: RoboHelp Size Limits

[Mary Deaton <Marymd -at- HALCYON -dot- COM>]

>My esteemed Colleagues,

>I am working with a colleague in writing a standalone help system
>using RoboHelp. We are concerned about the length of the
>Project Document. What size limits, if any, does RoboHelp have?
>What size limits does Word 6.0a have? (I know that Word 2.0c
>became unstable when the file size approached 7MB.)

>We are converting a 2,000 page written behemoth into a more
>usable, and less intimidating, help file.

>We would appreciate any advice or information you could provide.
>Thanks.

>Michael Andrew Uhl (uhl~m -at- glaxo -dot- com)
>Susan Olsen McCullough (mccullough~s -at- glaxo -dot- com)
>Glaxo Inc. Research Institute
>Research Triangle Park, NC


I would break your system up into 1-2 MB files while authoring for a number of
 reasons
that having nothing to do with the limitations of your tools. One, multiple
 files mean
multiple people can work on segments of the system at the same time. Searching
 for
something takes much less time than in a 7MB file, and your maintenance of the
 system
becomes much easier. To correct and error or update, you only have to open the
 smaller
file with the problem, not a huge file that you now risk corrupting. Makes error
 trapping
much, much easier.

Depending on how large your final Help system would be, I would also consider
 breaking it
into multiple Help files if you intend to have it accessed from a server by many
 people.
you greatly lessen the chances that the system becomes unstable or unavailable
 to someone
because someone else is accessing it at the same time. There are some mechanisms
 for
enabling cross-file searching and of course, interfile jumps are easy. These are
 partly
technical issues to solve and partly design issues.


Mary Deaton
KNOWware: Information You Can Use