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Subject:RE: ForeHelp to RoboHelp Transition From:Richard Smith <rsmith -at- rapidlogic -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:29:53 -0800
I've used RoboHelp 2000 (not v9 yet) and ForeHelp 4.0. Here's what I think.
Feature for feature, I don't think RH has many/any that can't be found in
ForeHelp. ForeHelp tends to do what I expect it to do more often then
RoboHelp did. Not that RoboHelp didn't have the capability, just that it
required a little more workaround/tweaking to get what I wanted.
I really like the whole support setup they have at e-help (RoboHelp's
corp.), user forums, tutorials, how-to's and the like. It's the kind of user
community that allows you to see what can be done instead of just what you
can do. ForeHelp doesn't have such an infrastructure, but their support
center email has been very good.
The big difference between the two IMO isn't features, but interface. They
are so different in how they accomplish similar tasks. Migrating from one
too the other is not terribly hard, but far from obvious.
On a funnier note: my version of ForeHelp 4 had index/TOC entries for a
number of help topics that didn't exist! They would return an error saying
contact your app vendor for an updated help file. Which they provided. I
just thought an HAT should have a very high grade help system showing off
all the bells and whistles.
Richard Smith
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anna Bernhardt [mailto:abernhardt -at- alitech -dot- com]
> Subject: ForeHelp to RoboHelp Transition
> I've enjoyed lurking and following the discussion in digest.
> The company I work for is currently using ForeHelp to create
> the help files
> for several products. The help files we have created have been quite
> straight-forward. (Only a small one is context sensitive.) We
> are looking at
> a significant product redesign and a need for much more
> extensive help files
> for the products (fully context sensitive and more files).
> I've found some of the limits with ForeHelp, but it is really
> simple to use.
> Right now I have crazy deadlines, but if I want the company to move to
> RoboHelp I need to start planning for the transition now. If
> you have gone
> through this transition or used both products, your advice would be
> especially helpful.
> So here are my questions. How much more functionality might I
> expect with
> RoboHelp? Is it easier to work between Frame documents and RoboHelp
> documents? How much time should I expect to need to get up to
> speed with
> RoboHelp if I learn quickly?
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