RoboHelp

From TechWriter Wiki

RoboHelp is an application for producing on-line documentation. Initially it may have only created Windows Help files, but today it can produce many different types of on-line output, and not necessarily only what you'd consider to be 'help' files.

The basic building block of RoboHelp is an HTML file. You can import several types of source file, and you can produce several output formats, but in the middle, you will always have an HTML file. You may not necessarily do anything to this HTML file, but HTML will always be the middle step. To this end, RoboHelp includes an HTML editor. This is quite a reasonable tool, and contains most of the functionality you'd expect to find in a fully-fledged HTML editor. On top of this, RoboHelp also supports many of the big HTML editors, such as Dreamweaver (naturally) and FrontPage.

In terms of input, RoboHelp can import files in any of the following formats:

• HTML
• Word
• FrameMaker
• PDF
• XML
• Other Help Projects

When a file is imported, RoboHelp will attempt to make sense of this file, and will create one or more HTML files from this. RoboHelp seems to make a better job of the conversion than many applications, but obviously not all formatting and functionality provided by the source format are supported in HTML, so it is essential to ensure that the source documents are 'HTML-friendly' first. RoboHelp will also generate a Cascading Style Sheet for the 'help project', based on the styles in the source document. Alternatively, you can use your own CSS across all documents, which is probably what you'd want to do in most cases, to ensure consistency.

At this point, it is possible to change the generated HTML (using either RoboHelp's HTML: editor or the editor of your choice). However, it is important to note that any changes to the HTML will not be reflected in the source document (the document that was imported). Additionally, if the source document changes, it will be necessary to re-import the document (and then possibly re-tweak the generated HTML).

Once the HTML files are correct, the actual on-line help can be generated. This can be to one or more of the following formats:

• FlashHelp - their format
• WebHelp - their format
• HTML Help
• WinHelp
• XML
• HTML
• Oracle Help
• JavaHelp
• Printed documents (Word documents or PDF files).

RoboHelp allows you to select multiple output formats and generate all of these at the same time.

WinHelp is the standard 'Windows Help' format of Compiled HTML (.chm). This is compatible with all Windows platforms, and produces a single self-contained file that can be distributed as-is.

HTML effectively outputs the generated HTML files. These can be displayed in any browser (but I haven't checked whether it generates HTML compatible with all flavors of browser - although I'd hope so...).

XML: Will automatically create XML according to the DocBook or XHTML DTDs. Can also define your own formats.

WebHelp is a format developed by Macromedia. This is not a proprietary format, and the output can typically be displayed in any browser, without the need for add-ins (need to check this).

FlashHelp is another Macromedia-developed format, which relies on Macromedia's Flash format for delivery. This is very slick and impressive. RoboHelp provides a number of processional-looking templates for the output, or you can develop your own. Because it uses Flash, FlashHelp relies on the Flash plugin being available on the user's PC. FlashHelp can also be presented in a vertical, narrow pane for displaying alongside your application.

Printed output can be created as either Word documents of PDF files. At first, this doesn't seem particularly useful, especially as you can import Word document: why would you import a Word document and then export it again as Word? Probably you wouldn't. However, given that the imported Word document may be changed once it has been converted to HTML, this is the only way of keeping Word and 'other format' documentation synchronized.

How it works is you import something into the product. This is converted to HTML, and you can then edit this using either their own built-in editor, or any one of a number of supported third-party products, such as DreamWeaver or FrontPage (I assume), Obviously any changes to the file at this point won't be reflected in the original version that you imported. Once you have finished updating the document, you publish it to one of the supported formats. Note that this includes Word.

Once a file is within RoboHelp you effectively have to keep it within RoboHelp (as the original files remain unchanged). It may be possible to 'get at' the source HTML files via the standard Windows explorer, but these will be HTML (and typically fragmented at the heading level.