Technical Communication

Technical Communication,Suite,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

When you import or add FrameMaker files (.book, .fm and .mif) in Adobe RoboHelp 7, you can also generate Context Sensitive Map IDs from FrameMaker source files. RoboHelp can convert custom markers defined in FrameMaker to map IDs and create bookmarks in HTML topics created during the import.  

 

Authors can choose any custom marker and apply it at the beginning of the paragraphs in the source files. A unique ID should be specified as the marker text at the time of applying this marker. Since this marker text would be used as the marker ID, the marker text should contain only alphanumeric and ‘_’ (underscore) character as shown in the figure below. The custom marker applied is ‘ExpBank’ and the FrameMaker ID for this paragraph is specified as ‘Marker1_Authorised_Persons’.

 

 

At the time of importing/adding files in RoboHelp, you need to specify the customer marker type. By default, ‘Define Context Sensitive Help Marker’ text-field is populated with the entry ‘TopicAlias’ and should be overwritten with the appropriate marker name, in this case with ‘ExpBank’ (please see the figure below).

 

 

RoboHelp processes the FrameMaker markers with this Marker type. and corresponding RoboHelp numeric Id and associated bookmarks are created. These associations can be seen in the ‘Edit Map IDs’ Dialog (available under ‘Context-Sensitive Help’ in the ‘Project Set-up’ pod).

 

 

First Column ‘Map ID’ represents the same ID specified in FrameMaker as the marker text. Second column gives the numeric Map ID which is used in the output and the third column represents the target bookmark.

Update (posted on March 26, 2008 by Vivek Jain) - The behavior has changed after RoboHelp patch 7.0.1. RoboHelp does not generate the mapIDs automatically and enables you to load the developer provided mapping files. If you are generating mapping files for your developers, please generate it through RoboHelp and export it. For importing the mapping file -> Go to Project Settings Pod, open Context Sensitive Help folder and right click on Map Files. You shall get Import Map File option in the context menu. In the import dialog box you will get option to import .hh, .hm and .h files. Please ensure that Locked option at the bottom is checked. RoboHelp will not touch your file if this option is on.

 

You can also see a report on the Map Ids (Tools->Reports) as shown in the screen-shot below.

 

The Map IDs can be tested through the ‘CSH Test’ tool. This tool (shown in the following figure) can be used for testing online/offline help.

 

In addition, RoboHelp provides several other features like changing the associations, importing and exporting map files etc. 

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 01:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,RoboHelp,UI,Technical Communication,HAT,Help Authoring

As the title suggests, this is the second part of the blog post that I posted on 3rd October. Now that we you are aware about the new User Interface elements, let's see how can you benefit from them in Adobe RoboHelp 7.

Adobe RoboHelp 7’s Personalized Environment

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The illustration shows the new look with the multiple document interface (MDI) in the Default Environment. The author can customize the arrangement of  pods, menus and toolbars, to create the workspace in which they are most comfortable. After re-arranging the real estate, the author can save different Environments and load them for different workflows. For example, when authoring, you would want fewer items showing in a less cluttered view. Whereas in doing language translation or creating a Table of Contents you would want several items open to be able to drag and drop elements from each.

Pods are new to RoboHelp. Formerly, authors were limited to a work area of static panes that could not be rearranged. Now pods can be easily opened or closed to give the author more screen real estate and eliminate clutter. They can also be dragged and dropped on top of each other to form a group of pods. In the illustration, notice that in the pod titled Project Manager, pods for Project Set-up and Snippets are grouped into one Pane. 

RoboHelp lets you take advantage of dual monitors and allows you to place separate pods in any arrangement you like on the second monitor

Let's now take a detailed look at Adobe RoboHelp 7's UI (as shown in the illustration above)

1. The Project Manager pod which is familiar to longtime RoboHelp authors as a place to keep track of project assets. The TOC, Index and Glossary can now be accessed from Project Manager Pod. There is a change in UI as now Adobe RoboHelp 7 enables you to define multiple TOC, Index and Glossaries in a single project.
2. The Project Set-up pod along with tabs for Single Source Layouts and Conditional Build Tags.
3. Beneath the Topics List, User Defined Variables and Toolbox tabs.
4. The main Design editor view with multiple topics open for easy drag and drop and copy/paste functionality among open topics.

Now we shall see how we can customize the environment in Adobe RoboHelp 7. I believe we have already done a lot of talking, let's see some action.

    

I hope you like the customizability of the Environment in Adobe RoboHelp 7. Apart from customizing Pods, Panes etc, you can also customize Toolbars and Menus. I shall cover this under yet another blog post.

Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Technical Communication,Suite,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,HAT,help authoring,3D,Acrobat,Captivate

When we announced Adobe Technical Communication Suite last month, it was a culmination of 2 years of planning and execution.  Adobe Technical Communication Suite is a single product, with a single installer and a single serial number.  FrameMaker and RoboHelp versions in the Suite are special versions with additional features.

The goal of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite is to provide a complete solution for all the technical communication needs.  With enhanced cross-product integration between the new versions of FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D, the Suite provides an unmatched solution for most of the workflows. In addition, the Suite also supports the key trends in the marketplace.

Support for authoring in global languages - Adobe Technical Communication Suite is available in four languages - English, French, German and Japanese.  Adobe RoboHelp was earlier localized in English and with Adobe RoboHelp 7, it is now available in all the four languages.  In addition, all products in the Suite are Unicode compliant.  Adobe FrameMaker 8 and Adobe RoboHelp 7 now support Unicode. Both FrameMaker and RoboHelp also include dictionaries and thesaurus for a large number of languages. Adobe RoboHelp 7 now provides for output user interface in multiple languages for WebHelp and FlashHelp.  

Support for Rich Media- FrameMaker 8 can add Captivate demos, launch Captivate to edit them (in the Suite version), double-click to play the Flash files in the browser (or the default application selected for .SWF), and save them in PDF.   Acrobat 3D includes 3D capture utility to create a U3D model from several CAD tools.  Acrobat 3D Toolkit enables you to prepare these 3D models (for example, define default views) and FrameMaker 8 can add 3D models and save them in PDF.  You can also double click a 3D model in FrameMaker to edit them in 3D Toolkit.  RoboHelp is very tightly integrated with Adobe Captivate and Adobe RoboScreenCapture and we have continued to enhance these integrations in Adobe RoboHelp 7.  While importing or adding FrameMaker files as live links, RoboHelp imports the SWF files and maintains them as SWF, while the default 2D image of the 3D model in FrameMaker is imported by RoboHelp.

Support for collaboration and team authoring- With Acrobat 3D part of the Suite, we have support for PDF based review and commenting workflows.The Suite versions of both FrameMaker and RoboHelp generate PDF with reader-extension, enabling Adobe Reader to comment on the PDFs. In addition, Adobe RoboSourceControl provides team authoring support for RoboHelp project files.  RoboHelp has close integration with RoboSourceControl, including in-application prompting when a file is edited without check-out.  As part of the Suite, authors can use RoboSourceControl to check-in and check-out FrameMaker and Captivate files.  With RoboSourceControl, you can specify user rights, rollback to previous versions, and also collaborate across networks. The version compare feature is however limited only to text files.

Support for Single Sourcing - With Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you can single source FrameMaker content in RoboHelp by adding FrameMaker files as live links (in the Suite specific version of Adobe RoboHelp 7). You can add .book, .fm and .mif files to RoboHelp project, import TOC, index and glossary, map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles, define pagination settings, convert markers to MapIDs for context sensitive help, ignore auto-numbers for specific styles, select topic naming formats, convert auto-numbers to HTML lists and so on. You can also add structured FrameMaker files.

Enhanced Support for Structured Authoring - Adobe FrameMaker 8 now has enhanced support for DITA. FrameMaker 8 also enables filtering based on attributes and import of XML files along with an associated CSS. Adobe RoboHelp 7 has a new HTML editor which generates a clean HTML and provides an enhanced code view. RoboHelp also has an ability to import and export XML through an extensible framework of XML handlers. 

More importantly, we are focused on enabling key cross-product workflows and you will see these products moving in tandem as we move forward. As I mentioned in my previous post, cross-product integration is a journey and we have many more milestones to cross. Your comments and suggestions will guide us in this journey. Do share them.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Adobe,RoboHelp,UI

One of the mjor advancements in Adobe RoboHelp 7 is the new Highly Customizable UI. Today, I shall dive deep into this and talk about finer features that we have implemented in RoboHelp 7.

RoboHelp has always been known for its author-friendly usability and we didn't want to compromise on the same. So it was a difficult task to design the new UI and thus we formulated a set of guide lines:

1. In no way, would be compromise on the ease of use of RoboHelp
2. The UI should not be dramatically different from our older UI, so that our existing customers don't feel out of place.
3. Reduce the total number of clicks. So, essentially a user should be able to access and use a functionality using the new UI, in exactly the same or lesser number of clicks as he could in Adobe RoboHelp 6
4. Ease of discoverability of functionality - intutive UI.
5. Provide as much customization as possible to the customer

Apart from customization, we also wanted to enable RoboHelp's UI to handle multiple documents. Now using Adobe RoboHelp 7, you can simultaneously opne, edit, and work upon multiple open topics without saving them. Adobe RoboHelp 7 fully supports Multiple Document Interface (MDI).

We added a couple of new UI elements. I shall now try to explain the new elements. We have grouped functionality based on workflow into different Pods. A Pod can be moved around in application, even outside the application window, and even to a different monitor. There are a number of Pods in RoboHelp. Some can be directly accessed from View Menu ->Pods, however there are a few other Pods like TOC, Index, Glossary that come up when you double click a TOC under “Table of Contents”, or an Index under “Index” or a Glossary under the “glossary” folder under “Project Manager”.

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A Pod has three states – Dockable, Hide and Floating. When in Dockable state, a Pod can be grouped along with other pods in a Pane. However, you can change the state to Floating and move it around in the RoboHelp HTML application, even outside the application to another monitor etc. Activating the Hide mode will cause the Pod to disappear. You can view the Pod again by accessing it from View Menu -> Pods and selecting the required Pod.

Adobe RoboHelp 7 provides the functionality of grouping Pods together in Panes. When you group two different Pods, a Pane is automatically generated that contains both the Pods. By default, RoboHelp 7 UI has three Panes – two on the left side of the application and one at the bottom. A Pane can contain as many Pods as you wish.

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A Pane has an added functionality to Auto Hide. When you activate this property, all the Pods in that particular Pane will squeeze and you would just be able to see the Pod names along the edge of the application. As soon as you however mouse over the Pod name, that particular pod would fly out. As soon as you click outside the area of the fly out Pod, it will again collapse.

Apart from these UI elements, we have a large area to view and edit topics, called Doc Pad. All topics open up in the Doc Pad. Doc Pad supports functionality of breaking up into multiple vertical and horizontal Doc Pad groups.You can also dock a Pod in the Doc Pad. It might be useful to move the Topic List Pod from the bottom Pane and dock it in the Doc Pad as shown in the image below:

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Ah! I thought I would be able to cover the New UI in a single post, but I was wrong. I shall modify the title of the blog and add Part 1 to it. I shall talk about this more in my next post.

Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Technical Communication,Suite,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

RoboHelp can import content from Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Dreamweaver and also enables HTML authoring in RoboHTML. In Adobe RoboHelp 7, a project can have multiple TOCs, multiple indexes and multiple glossaries. In addition to creating multiple TOCs and indexes, RoboHelp also provides an ability to create a hierarchical structure of TOCs and indexes. For example, let’s say there are three TOCs defined in RoboHelp, say, TOC1, TOC2 and TOC3. RoboHelp allows you to include TOC2 and TOC3 in TOC1. You can add a placeholder in TOC1 and associate TOC2 with the placeholder. This provides an ability to manage separate TOCs for different content brought in from different sources. Now, you can easily integrate content from several sources in RoboHelp. If you have a linked FrameMaker book in Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you can associate a TOC which is linked to the FrameMaker content, let’s say TOC2. TOC2 will reflect the changes in FrameMaker as content is updated. By placing TOC2 as a placeholder in TOC1, TOC1 becomes the integrated TOC and can be used for publishing the help output. Similarly, you can have a placeholder index – Index 2 in the overall project Index. Thus, you separately manage the changes in FrameMaker and at the same time, aggregate the content in RoboHelp. RoboHelp also provides an ability to apply conditional build tags to TOC entries and an ability to include variables in the TOC entries. By enabling conditional build tags, variables, multiple TOCs and TOC placeholder to create hierarchical structure of the TOCs, Adobe RoboHelp 7 provides unparalleled content aggregation functionality.

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,Suite,Acrobat 3D,Collaboration

Almost every project involves multiple reviews of technical documentation - content review, technical review, legal review and editorial review to name a few.  As I was planning to post around review and collaboration in Acrobat 3D, I discovered an interesting post from my colleague Doug Halliday.  He very effectively summarizes the value of Acrobat 3D in collaboration workflows. 

In another interesting development, we announced our new "Share" service this week at MAX. Currently in beta, Share is a free web-based service that allows you to easily store, manage, and share your PDFs and other documents. In addition, web services APIs available for developers to easily integrate document-based workflows with Share and let users collaborate on their documents. As my colleague Patrick says, this is only the beginning. Stay tuned for more.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

In Adobe Technical Communication Suite, FrameMaker files (.book, .mif and .fm) can be added as live links in RoboHelp (special version available only as part of the Suite). In this post, I will focus on the Add and Update functionality in this workflow.

Let's say, you want to add a FrameMaker book with 50 chapters and a table of contents to RoboHelp.  When you add the book as a reference, RoboHelp will allow you to import the FrameMaker Table of Contents, set pagination settings, map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles and so on. During the add process, RoboHelp splits the FrameMaker document into smaller HTML files and places them in a special folder with the same name as the chapter name in FrameMaker (there are settings available for selecting the naming pattern for topics).  Images are also placed in the same folder.  For a book containing 50 chapters, you will have 50 folders each corresponding to the chapter in the FrameMaker book.

You can add multiple .fm files or multiple books as live links in a single project.  RoboHelp also enables you to merge content you have in RoboHelp with the content linked from FrameMaker.  Adobe RoboHelp 7 now supports multiple TOC, multiple indexes and multiple glossaries. This enables a powerful content aggregation workflow in RoboHelp. At the same time, you manage the content from FrameMaker files in a set of special folders, providing you the flexibility of continuously updating the content as you edit the files in FrameMaker.

To make the workflow smoother, RoboHelp provides a visual indicator of whether the content in RoboHelp is out of synchronization with FrameMaker content or not.  The out of synchronization can happen because of two reasons  - (1) content is modified in FrameMaker or (2) Import settings have been modified in RoboHelp or content is edited in RoboHelp.  There are three options to update the content - Update, Update All and Force Update. Update is valid only for a selected FrameMaker file and will synchronize the content of that file. Update All will synchronize the content for all FrameMaker chapters or files which are out of sync. For example, if 10 of the 50 chapters are out of sync, only these 10 chapters will be updated. Force Update will re-import the whole book irrespective of which chapters are out of sync.

RoboHelp maintains books as books and organizes the content by chapters. If there is a change in the composition of the book, for example, a chapter is added. RoboHelp will show an out of sync indicator for the linked FrameMaker book. When you update the content, the new chapter will appear in RoboHelp with changes reflected in TOC, Index, Glossary, Conditional tags, variables etc. With Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you get all the powerful functionality which exists in RoboHelp along with an ability to manage content in FrameMaker.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Posted by Vivek Jain at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Technical Communication,Suite,FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,HAT,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures

If you are interested in learning more about Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe RoboHelp 7, you can participate in the Adobe eSeminars on Technical Communication (Registration required).

Posted by Vivek Jain at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)