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Earlier this week, I reported various problems after starting to work with
RoboHelp 5.0, Word 97 SR-2, and Windows 98. Thanks to all who provided
sympathy, suggestions, and gentle nudging to try out ForeHelp instead. <g>
Stephen Fisher offered the winning solutions:
<<It's been some time since we've used version 5.x, but when we did, and had
problems, Blue-Sky (now called eHelp Corporation, btw) gave us a couple of
tips: 1) be sure you're using ver 5.01; they gave us this link to download
it (maybe it's still working, I haven't checked): http://mail.blue-sky.com/regforms/win98reg.htm>>
Oddly enough, the sales reps at Blue Sky didn't know of this patch or that
there was a newer version of RH available; I still haven't heard back from
tech. support. All of which goes to show you: the people on techwr-l who
grapple with recalcitrant software daily are still the best resource for
solving problems. The URL still works, and the patch is now actually up to
version 5.08; after one dropped connection, it downloaded and installed
flawlessly. (Well... it was 6 Meg, and it did replace robohelp.dot, so I may
have some reformatting to do, but for a patch, this is still pretty
civilized.) It'll take some time to confirm that this resolves all the
current issues, but I'm optimistic. And if anyone has a bridge in Brooklyn
for sale, suddenly I've got all that spare cash that would have gone towards
an upgrade... <g>
<<2) compile using the menu pick File, Generate, WinHelp 4.0, from the RH
Explorer. Although I don't have this in an e-mail, one of the B-S support
reps told me on the phone that choosing this menu pick compiled the help
project using .dlls, which is more stable than compiling using macros, which
all other buttons in RH use.>>
B-S, huh? <g> Their explanation makes an awful lot of sense to me, given how
wonky Word's macro language can be.
<<Something you can use to work around your "illegal operations" and program
crashes may be to create the help documents in RH (topics, links, .CNT,
index, etc.), then save and close the project in RH and use the WinHelp
compiler to open and compile your project... since you're creating a WinHelp
4 project, you won't have any compatibility problems. (RH also uses the
WinHelp 4.0 compiler, you should be able to find it under the
\WinHelp\Movewh95 folder). You can find the Microsoft help workshop at Josef
Becker's site at: http://www.helpmaster.com/ under WinHelp, choose
development Aids.>>
This sounds like a good summer learning project once the current software
ships (in just under a month). Plus, I really do need to make time to play
around with the ForeHelp demo I downloaded and see how I like it. First
impressions: very nice!
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
