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Subject:Re: RoboHelp for FM in the real world From:"T. Word Smith" <techwordsmith -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 3 May 2004 06:14:54 -0700 (PDT)
Hi,
--- rinnie1 -at- yahoo -dot- com wrote:
>
> Questions
> ---------
> * I see that RH-FM can output CHM, but not HLP. It's
> my understanding that
> only RHO can gen HLP - please correct me if I'm
> wrong??
RHFM does not create HLP. WWP does.
> * It's also my understanding that RH-FM can gen
> WebHelp, which could have
> the same map IDs and same type/name of map file as
> the old HLP file did,
> so from the developer's side, changing to WebHelp
> might be transparent in
> that it wouldn't impact code, RIGHT????
It would affect the code because you have to call the
WebHelp API instead. I very much expect you can use
the same map IDs, but don't know for certain.
> * Has anyone done the RHO/RH-HTML to RH-FM
> conversion process? If so,
> would you please enlighten me (US) about your
> experience?
I doubt anyone has done a RHO --> RHFM conversion
because RHFM does not work like RHO, RHFM is not an
authoring environment. The conversion you need to do
is RHO --> FrameMaker, and that is not trivial ...
IMHO. I did one and it took quite a while and required
quite a lot of manual labor.
You might consider two approaches:
1) Create a DOC file from your RHO project and import
the DOC into FrameMaker.
2) Convert your HLP project HPJ to a RoboHTML MPJ and
use Quadralay's (www.webworks.com) to convert the MPJ
to MIF which you can open and work on in FrameMaker.
You probably will lose things like c-s markers, and
the like, and have to reinsert those manually.
> * In your experience, would migrating these projects
> to RH-FM be worth it?
In the long term, yes, very much so ... or go to
WebWorks Publisher (my preference). In the short term,
no. If your company cannot look past the next quarter,
I'd just do things the old way, even though it will
cost more in terms of resources and will be less
reliable and repeatable. If your company values the
medium to long term, then you'll be a hero <g>.
Cheers,
Sean
=====
T.
"Money makes the world go 'round is an incomplete statement; money is the fuel, and stupidity is the short bus that burns it." (Bill Swallow-02/04)
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