Single Sourcing from FrameMaker to RoboHelp
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.
Comments
Hi Vivek,
thanks for the information. I have a couple of questions:
1. Structured FrameMaker / DITA
Is the process outlined here only for "normal" FrameMaker files? What about structured FrameMaker files?
To be particular about it - is there also a possibility to work and synchronize with DITA FrameMaker files?
Structured FrameMaker files can also be added as live links in RoboHelp. RoboHelp will pick the style information from Structured FrameMaker files and enable the style mapping. In Adobe RoboHelp 7, DITA FrameMaker files will be considered as Structured FrameMaker files. At this point in time, there is no special handling for DITA files.
2. File Splitting
> During the add process, RoboHelp splits the FrameMaker document into smaller HTML files [...]
Why is that? Is this by design or can you also control / turn off this behaviour? Are there performance considerations with "bigger" FrameMaker files? (And if yes, how big is "big"? Page count? Character/word count? File size?)
How is the automatic splitting organized? By page? By some sophisticated system like "topic group analysis" based on e.g. heading paragraph formats (that can be specified in some dialog?)?
FrameMaker Chapters can be 50-100 pages long. From user experience perspective, it is a good practice in help documentation to keep the page size limited - users have to scroll the browser window.
RoboHelp allows you to split based on style information (for example, Heading1, Heading 2 and so on). However, this is a feature of RoboHelp - not a limitation. You can choose not to split the FrameMaker file.
3. File organization
3.1 FrameMaker 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).
3.2 Images
> Images are also placed in the same folder.
Is this customizable? Most people will like to see the graphics in a subfolder like "img" or "images" or "graphics" or so or in a "shared graphics" folder.
Images and Flash files are placed at the bottom of each folder and are seperated from the textual content. RoboHelp manages the images for the author, only those images appear in the view that are referenced in a topic.
Thanks much for taking the time to answer these questions.
Best,
Stefan Gentz
TRACOM OHG, Germany
Thanks Stefan for your interest. Please see my answers in italics above. - Vivek
Posted by: Stefan Gentz | October 2, 2007 03:05 PM
Hi Vivek,
I am very much looking forward to being able to try out the new Tech Comm Suite, but I have a question that I cannot seem to find the answer to anywhere. I am curious as to what the batch processing capabilities of Framemaker and RoboHelp will be in the new Tech Comm Suite. Currently, only Framemaker on UNIX/Solaris platforms have an integrated batch processing function with fmbatch and that only allows for saving PDFs. Will there be a batch processing feature in the new Tech Comm Suite that allows for batch processing of any type of output format supported by all of the components of the Tech Comm Suite, preferably not something that has to be user-written with the FDK?
Thanks,
Andy
Andy, Thanks for your interest. As you mentioned, FrameMaker provides fmbatch on Unix and FDK on Windows. Similarly, RoboHelp provides support for command line compile and publish- for all the output formats - WebHelp, CHM, FlashHelp, OracleHelp, JavaHelp and so on. You can process batch files using these commands. RoboHelp lets you define Single Source Layouts - which are a set of pulication settings. You can define a large number of these layouts for a single project and run them as a batch.
Batch processing by its nature requires lot of customization and a large number of FrameMaker and RoboHelp customers use these features. I also welcome your comments and suggestions for improvements in this area. - Vivek
Posted by: Andy G. | October 5, 2007 08:39 AM
Hi Vivek,
You say that RoboHelp supports command-line compile functionality, but I read that RoboHelp 6 did not support command-line compiling across a network. Will RoboHelp 7 support command line compiling across a network? Also, is there any chance of seeing RoboHelp on UNIX, or better yet the entire Tech Comm Suite on a generic (non-Sun/Solaris) Linux platform?
Thanks,
Andy
Hi Andy, Adobe RoboHelp 6 supports command line compile. The blog you have referred to contains incorrect information. Command line compile can also be along with RoboSourceControl which supports access across networks. Adobe RoboHelp 7 continues to support both these features. - Vivek
Posted by: Andy G. | October 20, 2007 02:56 AM
I've been trying out an evaluation copy of TCS and I want to check about cross references in framemaker importing as hyperlinks when a book is added by reference to a RH project. It is not working for me in certain cases.
RoboHelp allows mapping of the Cross References Definitions in FrameMaker to hyperlinks. We also have a post on this blog on how to use the cross reference mapping. I hope you are now able to get them to work. Please let me know if you have any further questions. - Vivek
Posted by: Steve Mundy | November 5, 2007 08:45 PM