Technical Communication

Structured FrameMaker,Technical Communication,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,XML Authoring

The Structure View allows for real-time validation of the structured element content while editing. It discourages the author from violating the constraint rules set by the EDD or XML schema which was earlier possible only while saving or exporting the document. The Structure View is now capable of pointing the constraint error for integer and float data constraints. The content will turn Red indicating that the content does not satisfy the data type constraint.

Enhancements include:
• Using min/maxInclusive schema constraints an author can define a valid range and data type for an element in an XML file. Alternatively user can add range information for an element in the EDD of a document using Range element in the EDD.
• The author can validate the document and figure out the reason why the element content does not satisfy the data type constraint.
• Using “Element > Validate” Menu FrameMaker would be able to indicate whether the component is outside the specified range or is an invalid data for a component.
• Author will now be able to rectify the error before actually exporting or saving the document.

A small demo on working with the real time Structure View validation while editing an XML document is shown below.

View demo in a new window.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Nakshatra
FrameMaker QE team
(nbhardwa@adobe.com)

Posted by Nakshatra Bhardwaj at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,RoboHelp,Technical Communication

Adobe RoboHelp 8 comes with a new layout for Help output i.e. Adobe AIR layout. One of its types is Adobe AIR Application which is a cross platform Help system with an embedded browser that can be deployed on a desktop or can use the online content to be viewed in AIR Viewer. This is a single deliverable help system like a CHM file that requires prior installation of AIR runtime. It hosts a range of new features and significant number of advantages over other help systems.

Some worth a mention are:

It lays greater emphasis on Security as publisher needs to sign the help system digitally at the time of the generation.

End User Feedback is something that is always valued and required to develop an efficient and more useful help system. Now, this capability is integrated in the Air Help System which enables receiving of comments and incorporating them to augment the effectiveness of Help system. Users can provide their feedback on help systems by adding comments for the topics present and utilize various Commenting options. One such option is Syncing of Comments that allows multiple users to see each others’ comments that are always updated to most recent using a server.

For completing the review workflow so that feedback gets transformed into updated help system that can be uploaded automatically, Auto Update feature has been introduced where in user gets to know about the latest updated version for a help system and can update to newer version instantly. All the users who are online and have older version of a help system, receive notifications for the update.

Like other browsers, Adobe AIR Help application provides users with an option to keep their Favorite links at one place. Also, RSS Feeds, that has become so popular now days, can also be added to the Favorites section. It includes an inbuilt RSS reader which provides many user friendly options for organizing the feeds.

Air Help application comes with the flexibility of seamless interaction between Online and Offline mode. As soon as user goes offline due to a connection problem, help system gets directed to offline help.

Adobe AIR help application comes with a variety of flashy templates and skins. An author can decide among templates and color themes as per his flavor.

Nitika Mangla
RoboHelp QE Team

Posted by Nitika Mangla at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,RoboHelp,RoboHelp Server 8, Technical Communication, WritersUA

With the release of RoboHelp 8, we have added and enhanced several capabilities of RoboHelp. These include
* Enhanced Editing and Layout Capabilities
* Scalable Single Sourcing
* Automation with Built-in Scripting
and many more.
With RoboHelp Server 8 we have also made several improvements over RoboHelp Server 7.

And of course, the Technical Communication Suite 2 allows you to use the great features of so many more products.

Now we would like to meet you and get your feedback on these new releases and how they help in your workplace.

The annual WritersUA Conference is happening in Seattle, WA between March 29 and 1 April 2009. I will be attending the conference, and will be present along with other Adobe staff at the Adobe presentation booth.

If you would like to setup a meeting time with me, please drop me a line at dhirenj at adobe dot com
Alternatively, walk up to the booth and ask for me. It will be a pleasure to hear from you.

Dhiren Jani
RoboHelp Product Manager

Posted by Dhiren Manubhai Jani at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,RoboHelp,RoboHelp Server 8, Technical Communication

Adobe RoboHelp Server 8 is completely rewritten in Java and is much more stable and robust than previous versions. Installation is very simplified now.

One major difference from earlier versions is now RoboHelp Server 8 does not need IIS Server. Instead it uses Tomcat server.

You can download RoboHelp Server 8 trial version from http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

Prerequisite for installing RoboHelp Server 8
• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or higher (http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp).
• Tomcat 6.0.14 (or higher) (http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi). Download the Windows Service Installer which is listed in the "Binary Distributions”.

Steps to install Tomcat :
0) Make sure JRE is installed.
1) Double click the Windows Service Installer to start the installation process.
2) In the “Choose Components” window, leave the “Type of install” as default option which is “Normal”.
3) Click next and select destination path for Tomcat.
4) Click next and specify the Tomcat Port. The default value is 8080. If you have some other process running on this port like IIS or something else, then you can change this port value to any other value like 8181 etc.
5) Default user name is provided as admin. You can use the same.
6) Click next and the Tomcat installer will automatically detect the JRE path for you. If you want you can change this value.
7) Click on install and then installation process will begin.
8) After installation is complete, Tomcat service will be started. A tomcat icon will be created in your taskbar.
9) Verify that tomcat is up and running by opening the page “http://localhost:’ in browser.
This should open the Tomcat Home Page if your tomcat is successfully running.
10) If you are unable to see the tomcat home page, see the tomcat log which are located at /logs.

How to start/stop Tomcat Service:
There are a number of ways in which you can start/stop tomcat service -
1) Double click the tomcat icon in the taskbar and that will launch the Tomcat Properties dialog and using that Tomcat service can be started/stopped.
2) In the Run prompt, enter services.msc. That will launch the Windows Service dialog. From the Windows services dialog box, you can start, stop, or restart Tomcat 6.0 service
3) Open the /bin folder and double-click tomcat6w.exe to launch Tomcat Configuration dialog box. You can start, stop, or restart from this dialog box.

Basic steps to install RoboHelp Server 8:
1) Install JRE and Tomcat.
2) Verify tomcat is up and running by visiting URL : http://localhost:
3) Launch setup.exe of RoboHelp Server 8
4) Just proceed through the installed, accept the license agreement and choose the destination path for RoboHelp Server 8 installation.
5) RoboHelp Server 8 should get installed.
6) Now open RoboHelp Server web admin URLl in browser: http://localhost:/robohelp/admin
7) Web Admin login page should get opened up.
8) Use default user name “admin” and password ”admin” to log in.
9) RoboHelp Server 8 web admin should get launched.

Tomcat can be configured to run with Apache or Microsoft IIS web servers. Details can be found in Getting Started Guide and Help documentation.

Posted by Vivek Kumar at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)