HelpBreeze/ForeHelp summary

[bkane -at- ARTISOFT -dot- COM]

     Last week I asked if anyone had experience with HelpBreeze Help
     authoring software. There were only three answers, so I'll paste all
     three in here for those interested (even though ForeHelp turned out to
     be the primary focus):

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     I have used HelpBreeze 1.6 and Robohelp 2.6, neither of them
     extensively. In both cases I had about half a day to learn enough to
     make changes to, and clean up, some existing files.

     I did not see much difference between the two products, either in what
     they did or how one used them to do it. Both were fairly easy to learn
     and use (for text; I wasn't creating hot spots or anything fancy).
     Problems appeared to be due to the Windows Help compiler, not the
     products themselves.

     I haven't had a chance to try out the new versions, though I would
     like to.

     JW, Sydney, Australia

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     As part of a help tools evaluation I performed for my company last
     summer I used HB, RoboHelp, and ForeHelp to construct a mini-help
     system for our application. I was favorably impressed to the extent
     that I recommended that we purchase and use it for our operation. Let
     me explain why we chose it. Our existing help system consists of ~5000
     topics in ~125 rtf files that live on a server and are worked on by a
     team of seven writers, so we needed an application that was adapatable
     to our environmnet. Since each of us doesn't have all the files on our
     hard drive, we need the ability to manually enter links to topics in
     files other that the one being worked on locally. ForeHelp absolutely
     prohibits this. Since our system is so large, we need all the
     assistance we can get.

     HelpBreeze's "syntax coloring" feature, which colors links and bitmap
     references differently on-screen was useful.

     I didn't include reporting (provided by ForeHelp) as useful in my
     evaluation because our system is too large to use the kind of reports
     generated by FH, and we have a reporting tool developed in-house.
     The single largest factor the tilted the balance away from RoboHelp
     (which seems almost identical in features and functionality) was
     technical support. I placed phone calls and sent emails to Blue Sky
     Software (the makers of RH) and received no responce for two weeks! My
     emails to SolutionSoft were answered the same day as they were sent. I
     have spoken to the Tech Support manager at Blue Sky, and he assures me
     that "we're getting better..."

     Feel free to contact me if you would like a more detailed description
     of my evaluation criteria or results.

     CW in San Jose, CA

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     I can't vouch for HelpBreeze, as I've never used it. However, I would like
     to put in a plug for ForeHelp, which I've done several WinHelp projects on.

     First, I subscribe to the Windows Help list. I'd say that Big Three Windows
     Help authoring programs are RoboHelp, Doc-to-Help and ForeHelp. Unlike
     RoboHelp and D2H, ForeHelp is not tied to MS Word. A lot of the problems in
     the Word-based products are due to Word problems. In my view, you're just
     adding another layer of complexity (acutally, two: Word itself, and the
     WordBasic macros that make the stuff work) to an already complex situation.
     If HelpBreeze is another Word front end, I wouldn't recommend it.

     ForeHelp writes directly to the RTF file. Of the others, it's screen output
     is closest to what your Help file will look like. It has its own style
     management set, and it supports all WinHelp features. It has been coded
     well (i.e., behaves about as well as you can expect from any Windows
     program). You can do both Win 3.1 and Win95 projects, or exclude one or the
     other. It also has some good Tools, such as a Navigator that lets you see
     your links per jumps and browse sequences (very handy when your project
     starts growing). Decent spell checker, search and replace tools, even a
     Thesarus. It also has a feature that will generate a "manual-type" RTF file
     for hard copy, a useful proofreading tool.

     Of the Big Three, ForeHelp has the least number of "problem" topics on the
     WinHelp list. I get the digest, and at least once a day, the RoboHelp guy
     has to chime in with his fixes, excuses and Word-blaming. The D2H guy,
     maybe 2-3 times a week. The ForeHelp guy rarely needs to fix a ForeHelp
     problem, but he does check in from time to time with some useful insights,
     usually macro or RTF stuff. I do see some HelpBreeze topics on the list,
     but not many, which leads me to believe that it is not used that often.

     I stand nothing to gain from this plug other than passing on my
     satisifaction with a good software tool.

     You can download a demo at http://http://www.ff.com/pages/demo.html.

     CM, Kenosha, WI

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