Re: Doc-To-Help vs. Robohelp (long)

["Cramer, Kim" <kcramer -at- NCSLINK -dot- COM>]

DWeber asked for comparisons between Doc-To-Help (D2H) and RoboHelp
(RH).  Here's my input:

I have worked with RH for 4 years (note that I am still doing basic Win
3.1 help).  I've just recently learned D2H - it's version 1.6 because
they choose to use EHelp for their Mac Help, and it won't work with a
newer version of D2H.   There may be workarounds for some of my
frustrations that I haven't discovered yet, or things may have been
changed in newer versions.  If so, please email me off-line and make my
day!

My company recently acquired a competitor and their products, and I'm
responsible for the Help on the new products.  The acquired company used
D2H to produce their Help files, so I had to learn it for this release
(we didn't want to take the time to convert the files to RH during
release deadlines!).  While they both overlay Word, the two products are
very different in focus.

Jumps:  D2H requires that you "pretend" you're developing a manual, even
if all you want to do is make a Help system.  When you add a new topic
to the Help, you need to place it in the DOC file in such a way that D2H
will correctly create the jump lists in the order you want during it's
conversion process. You can directly code the jumps, but these original
files weren't set up that way to begin with, and I didn't have time to
rework them (there's 10 different Help systems in the new product).  In
RH, you can add topics anywhere and create jumps where you want them
using the RH tools.  It's very easy.

I've found that whenever I change the text associated with a jump in
D2H, I have to redo the link so the conversion process can find the
correct jump text and topic.  If I discover that a topic title is
incorrect once I've converted the document (prior to compiling), I can
easily edit the DOC files so the next conversion will be OK.  But when I
try to redo the jump in the RTF files, it only sees the list of topic
titles created during the conversion, not the new title, so I can't
successfully fix the link in the RTF without going through the
conversion process again.  Some of my help files are very large and the
conversion can take 2-3 hours, so this is a waste of time for me!

Graphics:  Another difference between the products is that, in D2H, you
paste your graphics directly into the DOC files, making the DOC files
quite large.  During conversion, D2H saves the pasted graphics as
bitmaps and numbers them sequentially.  I suppose this is handy if you
have no way to save captured graphics as bitmaps.  In RH, you insert
pointers to graphics that you've already saved as bitmaps or sheds.  You
can give them any names you want and even share bitmaps between Help
systems, reducing the number of files you have to store.

Keywords:  D2H creates topic search keywords from index entries in your
DOC files.  When you add a topic in RH, the dialog box provides a field
where you type the entries.  In the same dialog box, you can specify a
browse sequence, indicate whether the topic is a popup (no keywords),
and edit the context string to something more readable.  I like that
it's all in one place.

Compiler Errors:  Another thing I really like in RH is their error
handling.  D2H simply displays the error log and you have to figure
where in the hundreds of topics the error occurred.  RH tells you the
file and topic where the problem is, so you can find it and (hopefully)
fix it.

That's all I can think of right now!

*************
Kim Cramer
mailto:kcramer -at- ncslink -dot- com
Sr. Information Developer
NCS Education, Mesa AZ
*************

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