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Subject:Re: Which would you prefer and why? (Help Tool) From:Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:14:50 -0400
Of course, the sensible answer is, "it depends." It depends on what
features you need in your HATT.
But for me, if my options are only RoboHelp and Flare, the winner is,
no question, Flare.
My Number One Pet Peeve with RoboHelp is the numbering issue that it
has inherited from Word. That alone is enough to make me seek other
tools. But RoboHelp has a number of other legacy bugs and quirks.
While Adobe is still supporting the product, the Adobe support team is
almost entirely new to the product as most of the original crew was
laid off.
Flare on the other hand was written by the same team that designed
RoboHelp, well aware of all the problems they ran into when designing
RoboHelp. And they tried to avoid them the second time around. Plus,
their documentation rocks! (I'm always frustrated when tools for
technical communicators have poor doc, but MadCap's is excellent)
Their Support is very responsive, and the Flare forums are watched by
a wealth of knowledgable folks.
Truth in reporting, I haven't used RoboHelp in a couple of years, and
my last interaction with Flare was version 4.0. But I frequently
cursed RoboHelp (like the time it broke because it didn't like my
Bluetooth settings! What the hay?) and I loved working with Flare.
If you've used RoboHelp, Flare is very easy to pick up.
--
Julie Stickler http://heratech.wordpress.com/
Blogging about Agile and technical writing
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