Adobe,RoboHelp,Technical Communication

Here is a good chance for people in Australia to check out the new features of RoboHelp 8 and TCS 2. If you are in Melbourne during 20th to 22nd May, visit the 12th Australasian Online Documentation and Content Conference 2009 at the Savoy Vibe Hotel.
Tony Self and Matthew Ellison will be presenting the key features of RoboHelp, Captivate and the Technical Communication Suite.

The capabilities they will cover include
1) AIR Help as the new output format
2) FM to RH import for online output
3) Enhanced review workflows in TCS for authoring collaboration
4) FrameMaker live link support in RoboHelp

If you are unable to visit the conference and still have some questions on RoboHelp or TCS 2.0, you can reach out to me or Mahesh Kumar Gupta. I am available at "dhirenj at adobe dot com", while Mahesh can be reached at "mahesh at adobe dot com"

Dhiren Jani
RoboHelp Product Manager

Continue reading "RoboHelp and TCS Down Under" »

Posted by Dhiren Manubhai Jani at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Authors can use the Hierarchical Books in Adobe FrameMaker 9 as XML Authoring Projects. They can keep structapps, EDD, Template, Read Write rules etc inside the book component hierarchy.

Fig 1. Snapshot of a Book which contains XML files and all other structured application files in a logical Folder.

If the author is working on a book which is composed of XMLs the author can add the files necessary for authoring structured applications for XML documents. Standard book operations can be performed over such a book while keeping the Structured Application files in Excluded state. These files would then not be included during book operations like TOC, Lists and Index generation.

Fig 2. A book which has an excluded Folder that contains all the files necessary to open the XML document in FrameMaker.

Keeping the structured application files in such a manner would ease the accessibility to these files. Locating and editing these files would be more efficient as different projects can maintain the associated EDD’s, templates and RW rules as projects using books in FrameMaker.
Moreover the XML’s lying in a book can be associated with a particular application furthur easing the author in remembering the application to open different XML files with.

To set application to use for an XML file inside a book-
Select File> Right Click-Select Properties.
Select application in the Use Structured Application dialog.
Select continue to associate the XML file with an Application.

Also an author can maintain an image repository which might be used frequently. These can be added as unsupported files in an excluded Folder inside a hierarchical book improving accessibility and efficiency.

Fig 3. A book that contains all the images used in the book in an excluded Folder. The images can even lie on web servers.
Similar repositories can be created for other such commonly used files in an authoring project.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Thanks and Regards,
Nakshatra Bhardwaj
FrameMaker Engineering

Posted by Nakshatra Bhardwaj at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,
Technical Communication,
FrameMaker Specialization,
Specialization,
DITA Specialization,

What is specialization

Specialization is the process by which new designs are created based on existing designs, allowing new kind of content to be processed using existing processing rules.Specialization allows you to define new kinds of information (new structural types or new domains of information), while reusing as much of existing design and code as possible, and minimizing or eliminating the costs of interchange, migration, and maintenance.

FrameMaker provides special handling for many objects in DITA like Table, Image, Title, Indexterm, Xref etc. so when we specialize any such element which have some special handling, same handling should be available for it. E.g. When we insert a crossref in any DITA document (xref or fm-xref element from element catalog or Special->Cross Reference), DITA-Cross reference dialog shows up. Same should happen if we insert any specialized xref element in any DITA document and name of specialized element should also show in DITA <xref> Element drop down.

Types of specialization

Specialization can be broadly categorised into two types
• Structural Specialization
• Domain Specialization

Structural specialization defines new types of structured information, such as new topic types or new map types. Structural types define structures for modules of information, such as concept or task or reference, which often apply across subject areas. When doing structural specialization we generally create new specialized elements from top (Map or Topic) and then create specialization till the element required so essentially with structured specializtion, we create a whole new hierarchy e.g. if we have to create a new structurally specialized UIControlWindow element for uicontrol element, we should create Specialization of Topic, body, p, uicontrol elements.

Domain specialization creates new markup that can be useful in multiple structural types, such as new kinds of keywords, tables, or lists, or new attributes such as conditional processing attributes.Domains typically define markup for a particular domain or subject area, such as programming, or hardware. Domain elements become available wherever their ancestor elements are allowed once the domains are integrated with the structural specializations in a document type. E.g. if we create domain specialized table element <DTable>, it should be available whereever table element is, in the element hierarchy.

NOTE: We dont support attribute based specialization in FrameMaker.

How to specialize DITA elements in FrameMaker

When we are specializing DITA elements, the most important and tedious process is defining the new specializing elements and deciding where they will fit in the existing DITA hierarchy. Some times we can get carried away and specialize elements more than what's required or can create crude specializations. So most effort should be put in carefully designing the specialized elements required and should avoid creating specialized elements when the existing elements could suffice. Once we have the list of elements we want and defined where they will fit in the existing DITA elements hierarchy, 75% task is done and rest is moreover following the following mechanical steps.

1. Create new set of DTD’s defining the new set of elements derived, from existing element types. The Detailed steps for this are listed at the end.
2. Combine the specialized DTDs into a base dtd.
3. Create a new Read Write Rule file using the existing standard Topic/Map read write rule file and add the element mappings for specialized elements derived from DITA elements, which have some mappings defined. Its like if we have any declaration in read write rule file for the base element and we want the element derived from that to have similar functionality, we need to add the same declaration for child element as well e.g. If we have mapped DITA image element to FrameMaker Graphic element then the specialized image element need to have same declaration in read write rule file to have special image handling. If there is unwrap statement for any element, then elements derived from that should be unwrapped as well.
4. Import the base DTD as EDD in FrameMaker using the read write rule file and DTDs created in step 1-3.
5. Check the class attributes of all the specialized elements in EDD. The correct element hierarchy should be created from the base element to the specialized one. Its the only criteria for Frame to map specialized element to its parent element.
6. Make FrameMaker specific changes in the EDD file as listed below

   - For topic specialization :-

• Copy All the elements starting from "FM-" from standard Topic EDD to the New EDD generated. These are all FrameMaker specific elements which are declared to handle special objects like table, crossref, image etc.
• Change the content model of element properties to "fm-propheading?, fm-propertybody+".
• Change the content model of element choicetable to "chhead, fm-chbody" and simpletable to "sthead, fm-stbody.
• Change the content model of sthead to "fm-stheadrow" and chhead to "fm-chheadrow".
• Add fm-xref element to the content model of xref, syntaxdiagram, synblk, groupseq, groupchoice, groupcomp andfragment elements and all the elements where xref is valid. We need to do the same for specialized xref elements as well i.e. whereever any element of type xref is allowed, fm-xref should also be allowed.
• Add fm-linktext where ever linktext or any specialization of linktext is allowed.
• Hide the elements fm-graphic, alt, index-base, index-see, index-see-also and index-see-also using conditional tag.

- For Map specialization :-

• Change the content model of reltable to (fm-reltablemeta)?,( relheader)?,(fm-reltablebody).
• Change the content model of relheader to (fm-relheaderrow).
• Copy elements fm-relheaderrow and fm-reltablebody from standard Map edd to current EDD.
• Add fm-topicreflabel to content model of topicref.
7. Copy the element formatting of standard DITA elements from the default DITA Topic/map EDD to the new EDD and also define the formatting rules for the new specialized elements.
8. Import EDD into new template file, import paragraph and character formats from standard DITA template into this new template and create new structured application for specialized elements using the template, read write rule and the integrated DTD file created from step 1-7. Add new topic type as doctype in the application definition and also replace the name of ditabase.dtd with the new integrated DTD created in step1. We also need to change the value of ‘writer external dtd‘ in the read write rule file to the new integrated dtd name.
9. Change the new application name in DITA option dialog (DITA-Topic Application, DITA Map Application) and click on save.
10. You should be able to see your specialized Topic/Map in the DITA->New DITA file submenu. Start authoring. Its simple.

DITA elements with special handling in FrameMaker for specialization

For special elements like table, image, indexterm, footnote etc. the EDD contains special information denoting its type. All specialized elements for such special elements should also have corresponding information in EDD then only the special handling can be provided to the specialized elements. Following is the list of elements with special handling and the needful for specialization

1. topicref:- User should include fm-topicreflabel as the valid first element in the general rule of its specialized topicrefs. The functionalities like update reference, open all topicref, conref topic ref, navtitle update etc. are also available for specialized topicrefs.
2. indexterm:- If indexterm import and export processing is ON in DITA options then the nesting of indexterm and Index-see, index-see-also, index-sort-as processing etc. is also available for specialized indexterms.
3. table/simpletable/reltable/choicetable:-DITA table elements doesn’t contain numCols and colWidth properties which need to be set explicitly in ditafm.ini for reltable/simpletable and for elements specialized from them. While specializing reltable, simple table etc., user need to add elements parallel to fm-reltablemeta, fm-chheadrow etc with similar structure in the EDD file (as we have for standard elements) and need to make similar declarations in read write rule file for the new elements. When we insert specialized table/simpletable/reltable elements, the name of specialized elements also appears in insert table dialog.
4. topic/map:- If correct specialized topic/map application is set in DITA options, the specialized topic/map name appears in DITA->New DITA file submenu. Composite FM doc/ Book with FM doc etc functionality is available for the specialized topics as well.
5. image/alt:-We need to make declaration in read write rule file for specialized image element to work as Frame graphic object. We don't support specialization of alt element.
6. xref/link:- When a specialization of xref element is created, in the EDD file, we need to make element fm-xref available whereever the specialized xref is available. When we insert specialized xref/link element in DITA document, DITA-CROSS REFRENCE dialog opens and name of specialized xref/link element is available as DITA <xref/link> element.
7. linktext:- We need to add fm-linktext in the EDD, as a valid choice, at all occurrences of specialized linktext element.
8. prolog/draft-comment:- If the DITA option for conditionalize prolog/comments on file open is selected, then the specializations of prolog and draft-comment elements are conditionalized as well.
9. fn:-We need to declare specialized fn element as footnote in read write rules file. NOTE: For all the above elements with some special handling, empty class attribute is allowed for the base element.

NOTE: For all the above elements with some special handling, empty class attribute is allowed for the base element.

Download PDF for this Topic

How to make changes in DITA DTDs for specialization

DITA dtds are divided into smaller modules, based on the base elements hierarchy (Topic and Map) and their respective domain and structural specializations like Task, Concept, BookMap, UIDomain, Programing Domain etc. There are fixed set of changes which need to be done in DTDs which are defined below.

Making changes in DTDs for structural specialization

For structural specialization, we need to create a new DTD file with specialized elements and then we have to integrate it with the existing DITA DTDs , the way we want our final output to work. If we want to make our specialized elements types work with the existing topic/map hierarchies, we can add our specialization to ditabase.dtd or we can create a separate dtd. We will take an example where user want to define a new specialized object element with only specialized xref and footnote elements as its content model. The Steps to perform are :-

1. Copy any existing MOD file and rename it. e.g. refrence.mod to objectsp.mod.
2. Open the new mod file e.g. objectsp.mod and in section "SPECIALIZATION OF DECLARED ELEMENTS", change infotype declaration to the newly declared structured type, which will be required for integrating the specialized modules with the existing ones.

<!--========================================================-->
<!-- SPECIALIZATION OF DECLARED ELEMENTS -->
<!--======================================================= -->
<!ENTITY % objectsp-info-types "%info-types;" >


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: In next 3 steps, remove the existing stuff in the respected heads and add the new elements related information. We copy existing DTds mainly for the purpose that we get a formatted structure defined for declaring our new elements.

3. Declare the new entities for the specialized elements required till the top of the hierarchy.
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- ELEMENT NAME ENTITIES -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ENTITY % myobjecttype "myobjecttype" >
   <!ENTITY % mybody "mybody" >
   <!ENTITY % myp "myp" >
   <!ENTITY % myobject "myobject" >
   <!ENTITY % myxref "myxref" >
   <!ENTITY % myfootnote "myfootnote" >
   <!--======================================================= -->
   
4. Declare the new specialized elements.
   <!--======================================================= -->
   <!-- ELEMENT DECLARATIONS -->
   <!--======================================================= -->
   <!-- LONG NAME: myobjecttype -->
   <!ELEMENT myobject ((%myxref;)*, (%myfootnote;)*)>
   <!ATTLIST myobject
   declare (declare) #IMPLIED
   classid CDATA #IMPLIED
   codebase CDATA #IMPLIED
   data CDATA #IMPLIED
   type CDATA #IMPLIED
   codetype CDATA #IMPLIED
   archive CDATA #IMPLIED
   standby CDATA #IMPLIED
   height NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   width NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   usemap CDATA #IMPLIED
   name CDATA #IMPLIED
   tabindex NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   longdescref CDATA #IMPLIED
   %univ-atts;
   outputclass CDATA #IMPLIED
   longdescre CDATA #IMPLIED >
   --------------------------- and so on for other elements
   
5. In "SPECIALIZATION ATTRIBUTE DECLARATIONS" section, declare the element from which the specialized element is derived from. We have to declared the hierarchy till the base topic/Map type (starting with a "-" for structural specialization) e.g. if the specialized element is derived from any reference element, we have to define the complete hierarchy from specialized element to reference to topic (as reference is again specialized from topic).
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- SPECIALIZATION ATTRIBUTE DECLARATIONS -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ATTLIST myobjecttype %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/topic myobjecttype/myobjecttype " >
   <!ATTLIST mybody %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/body myobjecttype/mybody " >
   <!ATTLIST myp %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/p myobjecttype/myp " >
   <!ATTLIST myxref %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/xref myobjecttype/myxref " >
   <!ATTLIST myobject %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/object myobjecttype/myobject " >
   <!ATTLIST myfootnote %global-atts; class CDATA "- topic/fn myobjecttype/myfootnote " >
   
6. Integrate the new mod file with the existing ones by modifying ditabase.dtd. For the specialization in the example stated above, add entry in the “TOPIC NESTING OVERRIDE" section for declaring the new type with the base types and in "TOPIC ELEMENT INTEGRATION" section for importing the mod file
   <!--========================================================-->
   <!-- TOPIC NESTING OVERRIDE -->
   <!ENTITY % info-types "topic | concept | task | reference | ? myobjecttype | glossentry" >
   <!--========================================================-->
   <!-- TOPIC ELEMENT INTEGRATION -->
   <!--========================================================-->
   <!-- Embed topic to get generic elements -->
   <!ENTITY % topic-type PUBLIC ?"-//OASIS//ELEMENTS DITA Topic//EN" ?"topic.mod" >
   %topic-type;
   <!ENTITY % objectsp-type PUBLIC ?"-//OASIS//ELEMENTS DITA Topic//EN" ?"objectsp.mod" >
   %objectsp-type; HOW TO MAKE CHANGES IN DITA DTDS FOR SPECIALIZATION MAKING CHANGES IN DTDS FOR DOMAIN SPECIALIZATION
   ---------- and the other existing ones

   ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: If we want to restrict multiple topic types in a single topic type we can create a new integration file and not pull in all the topic types together like we did in the current example.

Making changes in DTDs for domain specialization

For domain specialization, we need to create 2 DTD files. In first file we declare the specialized elements and in the second dtd we declare the entities for integration related information as domain specialized elements should be available where ever their base element is. We will take an example where user want to define 3 new domain specialized elements for image, prolog and link respectively. The Steps to perform are :-

1. Copy any existing MOD file and rename it. e.g. utilitiesDomain.mod to domainsp.mod.

   ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: In next 3 steps, remove the existing stuff in the respected heads and add the new elements related information. We copy existing DTDs mainly for the purpose that we get a formatted structure defined for declaring our new elements

2. Open the new mod file e.g. domainsp.mod and in section "ELEMENT NAME ENTITIES", declare the new entities for the specialized elements.
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- ELEMENT NAME ENTITIES -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ENTITY % Dlink "Dlink" >
   <!ENTITY % Dprolog "Dprolog" >
   <!ENTITY % Dimage "Dimage" >
   <!--=======================================================-->
3. Declare the new specialized elements.
   <!--======================================================= -->
   <!-- ELEMENT DECLARATIONS -->
   <!--======================================================= -->
   <!-- LONG NAME: Dimage -->
   <!ELEMENT Dimage (%alt;) >
   <ATTLIST Dimage href CDATA #REQUIRED
   keyref NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   alt CDATA #IMPLIED
   longdescref CDATA #IMPLIED
   height NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   width NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   align CDATA #IMPLIED
   scale NMTOKEN #IMPLIED
   placement (inline | break | -dita-use-conref-target)
   "inline"
   %univ-atts; outputclass CDATA #IMPLIED >
   --------------------------- and so on for other elements.
4. In "SPECIALIZATION ATTRIBUTE DECLARATIONS" section, declare the element from which the specialized element is derived from. We have to declared the hierarchy till the base topic/Map type (starting with a "+" for domain specialization) e.g. if the specialized element is derived from any other utility domain element, we have to define the complete hierarchy from specialized element to utilities domain to topic (as utilities domain is again specialized from topic).
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- SPECIALIZATION ATTRIBUTE DECLARATIONS -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ATTLIST Dprolog %global-atts; class CDATA "+ topic/prolog
   domainsp-d/Dprolog " >
   <!ATTLIST Dlink %global-atts; class CDATA "+ topic/link
   domainsp-d/Dlink " >
   <!ATTLIST Dimage %global-atts; class CDATA "+ topic/image
   domainsp-d/Dimage " >
5. Next we need to define the ENT file which allows the elements to be substituted instead of being aggregated i.e. wherever the parent element is allowed, the specialized one should be allowed as well. Create a new ENT file (or copy any existing one).
6. Open the ENT file and declare the entities for integration of new elements with the existing one (using domain extensions)
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- ELEMENT EXTENSION ENTITY DECLARATIONS -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ENTITY % domainsp-d-image "Dimage" >
   <!ENTITY % domainsp-d-link "Dlink" >
   <!ENTITY % domainsp-d-prolog "Dprolog" >
7. In same ENT file, decare the domain attribute entity to define the ancestry till the root from which the elements are derived. If you are specializing any element from some domain extension, then you need to declare till the top.
   <!--====================================================== -->
   < !-- DOMAIN ENTITY DECLARATION -->
   <!--=======================================================-->
   <!ENTITY domainsp-d-att "(topic ank-d)">
8. Integrate the new mod file with the existing ones by modifying ditabase.dtd. For domain specialization we need to integrate both element definition dtd and the ENT file we created so we need to modify at 4 different places
• First we need to do the vocabulary declaration and define the new domain.
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!-- DOMAIN ENTITY DECLARATIONS -->
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!ENTITY % domainsp-d-dec PUBLIC "-//domainsp//ENTITIES DITA
  domainsp Domain//EN" "domainsp.ent" >
  %domainsp-d-dec;
  -------- and the other existing ones.
• Do the vocabulary substitution and define the elements from the which the domain specialized elements are extending from.
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!-- DOMAIN DOMAIN EXTENSIONS-->
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!ENTITY % image "image | %domainsp-d-image;" >
  <!ENTITY % prolog "prolog | %domainsp-d-prolog;" >
  <!ENTITY % link "link | %domainsp-d-link;" >
  -------- and the other existing ones
• Do the vocabulary attribute declaration.
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!-- DOMAINS ATTRIBUTE OVERRIDE-->
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!ENTITY included-domains "&ui-d-att; &hi-d-att; &pr-d-att;
  &sw-d-att; &ut-d-att; &indexing-d-att; &domainsp-d-att;" >
• Finally put the vocabulary definition and pull in the mod file for domain element integration. It will pull in all the specialized elements declared in the mod file.
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!-- DOMAIN ELEMENT INTEGRATION -->
  <!--========================================================-->
  <!ENTITY % ank-d-def PUBLIC ?"-//domainsp//ELEMENTS DITA User
  Interface Domain//EN" "domainsp.mod" >
  %domainsp-d-def;
  -------- and the other existing ones

Thanks and Regards,
Ankur Singla

FrameMaker Engineering

Posted by Ankur Singla at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker, Technical Communication, DITA, Ditaval, Filtering, PDF

Adobe FrameMaker 9 allows to use Ditaval based filtering of content while producing following output from a DITA Map:

• PDF
• Print Output
• FrameMaker Book (with FM Components)
• Composite Document

For using the Ditaval filtering with FrameMaker, first create a ditaval file specifying the filtering criteria and then select this ditaval file while producing the output.

While creating the PDF, FrameMaker Book (with FM Components) or Composite document from a DITA Map, following shall be done to use Ditaval filtering:

• Choose the option ‘Prompt For DitaVal File’ in the ‘Save Document’ dialog (as depicted in image below).
• After clicking on Save, a ‘Choose DitaVal File’ dialog appears. In this dialog, select the Ditaval file to be used to apply the content filtering.
• On choosing the file, the desired output gets generated as per the filtering specified in the Ditaval file.

For Print Output, user has the option to enable/disable Ditaval filtering feature using the ‘PromptForDitaval’ option in ditafm.ini file. Set ‘PromptForDitaval =1’ to enable this feature. When enabled, the ‘Choose DitaVal File’ dialog shall appear whenever the user invokes print command for a DITA Map.

Following is a demonstration for 'Using DITAVAL Filtering while generating PDF output from a DITA Map' :

view in a separate window

Thanks and Regards,
Tarun Garg

FrameMaker Engineering

Posted by Tarun Garg at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker, Technical Communication, DITA, Ditamap, Ditamap Publishing, PDF

1. Attribute ‘print’: While generating output form a DITA Map, ‘print’ attribute value shall be used to determine whether the topic shall be included in the output. If no value is specified, it is assumed to be ‘yes’. User has the option to enable/disable this feature using the ‘UsePrint’ option in ditafm.ini file. Set ‘UsePrint = 1’ to enable this feature.
2. Relationship Table Support: Relationship tables, if present in the DITA Map, shall be used to generate related links in the output. User has the option to enable/disable this feature using the ‘UseReltable’ option in ditafm.ini file. Set ‘UseReltable = 1’ to enable this feature.
3. DITAVal Filtering Support: The DITA Map content shall get filtered, based on the provided DITAVal file, to generate the output. The filtering gets applied to the DITA Map, as well as to all the referenced Topics within. User has the option of specifying the DITAVal file at the time of generating output.

1. FrameMaker Book with FM components: A FrameMaker book is created based on the DITA Map. Each Topic gets converted to a separate FrameMaker document. Each Map (contained by the DITA Map), gets converted to a separate FrameMaker Composite document. The generated book contains these converted FrameMaker documents in the same hierarchical structure as the DITA Map.
2. FrameMaker Book with XML components: A FrameMaker book is created based on the DITA Map. Each Topic/Map in the DITA Map, gets added to the FrameMaker Book in the XML format itself. The generated book contains these XML documents in the same hierarchical structure as the DITA Map.
3. Composite Document: A Composite FrameMaker document is created based on the DITA Map. The content from all the referenced Topics/Maps is collated to create a single FrameMaker document for output.

Following table summarizes the availability of output related DITA features , while producing different outputs for a DITA Map:

*For this output, the topicrefs where 'print' attribute is set to ‘no’, do not get dropped from the output book. Rather, corresponding component’s ‘Exclude’ flag gets set in the output FrameMaker Book.

1. Open DITA Map in FrameMaker’s RM View.
2. Use menu command:
   • ‘File-> Save Ditamap As’, for all outputs except print.
   • ‘File->Print Ditamap’, for print output.
   • ‘File->Save As PDF’, for PDF output.
3. Select appropriate type from ‘Save as Type’ drop-down in the ‘Save Document’ dialog. Refer to the table below, for ‘Save as Type’ option to be used for different outputs.

Following table lists the ‘Save as Type’ option to be used for different outputs:

Following is a demo to 'Generate FrameMaker Book (with FM Components) from a DITA Map' :

view in a separate window

Following is a demo to 'Generate PDF output from a DITA Map' :

view in a separate window

1. Using FrameMaker 9, generate a FrameMaker Book (with FM/XML components) or a FrameMaker Composite Document, from a DITA Map. (Note: Using each of these different outputs, shall have a different impact in terms of the post-processing effort & the final output that will get generated.)
2. Import the generated output into RoboHelp 8, using RoboHelp’s menu command ‘File->Import->FrameMaker Document’.
3. Do the required post-processing and/or the settings. Generate the desired output (AIR/HTML/FlashHelp/CHM) using RoboHelp 8.

Following is a demo to 'Generate HTML output from a DITA Map' :

view in a separate window

Thanks and Regards,
Tarun Garg

FrameMaker Engineering

Posted by Tarun Garg at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker 9,9.0.1,PDF,DITA,Technical Communication,STC

Dear Framers

Welcome back!

I hope most of you would have taken a break during the vacation.

At my end, I also keep working on getting the breaks fixed :-) . Yes, I am referring to the patch activity.

I appreciate that you experts find out the issues and report them in time to me. Since there were some known and unknown issues which you found with FrameMaker 9, I decided to get them fixed on priority.

The patch 9.0.1 was released some time back and it addresses a large number of key issues. The issues fixed with this patch are:

1. Type-ahead functionality of Control Key shortcuts (Ctrl+0 and Ctrl+9) is fixed.

Note - When focus is on type‐ahead area, with a tag displayed in it, clicking in the document applies that displayed tag. “ESC” key should be used to exit from the status bar’s type‐ahead area.

2. When the starting letter is pressed the fly‐out menu of the status bar DOES NOT APPLY the value automatically NOW if there is a SINGLE entry.

3. Now, index “see” characteristics with DITA indexterms can be completely controlled by you.

4. DITAVal filter works correctly NOW even if there was conditional text applied on some elements.

5. In Save as CMYK Pdf functionality, rendering of imported PDFs can be done as a CMYK preview.

6. The crash issue occurring when specifying a wrong file name in browse dialog at the time of inserting a new topicref (using element catalog) in a Map/BookMap file is fixed.

7. Para Designer doesn’t get updated in the minimized mode now.

8. In German locale, messages appear correctly in XML Schema Log.

9. File‐>preferences‐>interface‐ > Hide Panel on Close; will be checked OFF by default NOW. This boosts performance.

10. The issue of graphics getting dropped in CMYK PDF is fixed now.

The ReadMe can be downloaded from
https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=26e86a52-1056-4a40-82b5-0aa23adcd37e

You may find some change in behavior when you apply this patch but please do no worry. We are aware of these and there are simple workarounds for these. Let me discuss these in detail.

• Command popups in Designers (Paragraph, Character and Table) may not open on mouse click. You may also find empty building block list.

Tips

1. Make sure "Hide Panels on Close" if OFF in File->Preferences->Interface dialog (once it is done , this setting will persist for all subsequent FM session)

2. Close the Designer (Para,Character or Table) once and reopen. This will fix the issue. (need to be done once for FM session)

Please keep giving your valuable feedback.

I am really excited that at STC in Atlanta, I will get an opportunity for discussion with you all!

Thanks and regards
Mahesh

Continue reading "Understanding the 9.0.1 FrameMaker Patch" »

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe FrameMaker,CMS Integration,WebDAV enhancements

To edit XML files on a WebDAV server:
1. Open Internet Explorer browser.
Note: This feature is supported in Internet Explorer 6 and later.
2. Enter the URL of the XML file you want to open.
3. Click the edit icon on the browser’s toolbar, and select “Edit with Adobe FrameMaker 9”. FrameMaker is launched.
FrameMaker accesses the WebDAV server, checks-out the XML file and opens it in FrameMaker.
Note: To use the browser plug-in functionality on Windows Vista the user would need to disable the Protected Mode in the Windows Vista browser. To do this access-Tools>Internet Options>Security and uncheck Enable Protected Mode.
4. In the choose application dialog box that appears, select an appropriate Application to open the XML document.
Note: This dialog box does not appear if you have already specified the Application in the Generic Application Selector PI of the XML document.
5. Edit the document in FrameMaker and save the changes. The changes are saved back to the server depending on the setting kept in the Preferences. Users have option to either upload the file on each save or to save changes when the user closes the file currently being edited.
6. Close the document. FrameMaker saves the XML file on the WebDAV server. The file is now checked-in and unlocked on the WebDAV server.
You must log in to the WebDAV server the first time you open an XML file. Your login credentials are verified by the
WebDAV server before the XML file is locked and checked out for opening in FrameMaker. The valid credentials will be maintained for that particular FrameMaker session. Other users can open the locked XML files in view-only mode only.

A link to a small demo on using the Brower plugin to edit XML files over WebDAV is provided below.
View demo

Nakshatra
FrameMaker QE team

Posted by Nakshatra Bhardwaj at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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,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

Continue reading "Meet Us At WritersUA" »

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

FrameMaker 9,User Interface,PDF,DITA,Technical Communication,WritersUA

Hello Framers

You kept asking but till 8, we said wait! Now 2009 ends this wait with 9.

Yes, I am referring to the enriched User Interface of FrameMaker 9. I am sure you are enjoying the power of this power pack which boosts your productivity and efficiency with your existing workflows and also brings new functionality which you can leverage to create new workflows which you could just conceive earlier but couldn’t implement.

But I do understand that after working with the same interface for a really long period, the new interface might mean some change for you. A few of you wrote to me that you need more education on the new interface. A couple of you found the interface a bit confusing.

This makes me think of an interesting change I made some time back. That was about my new mobile phone. My old phone had a crude interface, no profile setting and limited functionality. I wanted to use new features offered by the latest technology in the market. I evaluated and upgraded to a new phone. This new phone came with smart looks, new features and tools but getting used to it took me some time. Believe me, for initial two days, I used to keep the phone back in my drawer thinking that it’s difficult to learn, this is not for me. But gradually I started playing with the phone, explored the features, got help from product help and started enjoying the enhanced and new productivity benefits brought by this phone.

A month back, somebody asked me if I had a phone for donation. I searched and found the old phone. Out of curiosity, I inserted my SIM Card, charged the phone and started typing an SMS. Oh my God!! How difficult and cumbersome… I just couldn’t come to the agreement with truth that this was the phone I didn’t want to change. I smiled and said to myself… Mahesh! You made the right move of initiating, accepting and adjusting to the change which now I am enjoying thoroughly!

With newer technological developments, I might want to change to a newer phone in the future but I don’t have the fear of change as I know this only ‘constant’ will be for good only…

I am sure you would like to know more about the FrameMaker 9 User Interface. A small demo on working with conditional text through new UI is shown below.

RJ Jacquez, Senior Evangelist, will be explaining the new UI in detail to you. I recommend that you please attend his elearning session on Feb 26th.

Details are available at http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/2009/02/elearning_session_on_the_new_u.html

This time FrameMaker Chautauqua conference didn’t materialize but I plan to be present at WritersUA in Seattle. We can discuss more on FrameMaker and Technical Communication Suite in person if you are attending the conference. We can plan a meeting in advance. You are always welcome to write to me at mahesh@adobe.com

-Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe RoboHelp,technical communication suite,learn,new features,Adobe AIR

Adobe RoboHelp 8 has several exciting new features. First and foremost, Adobe RoboHelp 8 is now an XHTML Authoring Tool – that means, there is clean XHTML code editing in an visual environment. In addition, you can validate the code to assure World Wide Web Consortium compliance.

You can see the list of other new features below.  To learn more, please click on the reviewer’s guide below.  Reviewer’s guide also has several Captivate demos which illustrate some of these features.  You may need to download the PDF to view these demos.  You can also download the try it exercises.

Publishing Features – special enhancements for the end-user

Enhanced support for Adobe AIR – Adobe AIR™ technology provides a revolutionary new help application that provides many new ways for users to find information, add and share comments, in a system that is always up to date. It combines the best of the Web as well as the desktop, whether the user is online or not. Authors can generate this exciting new Adobe AIR help application and package it for easy deployment and management of automatic updates.

Powerful Search engine – Search results are ranked by relevance with the initial text of the topic for context, search highlighting, a synonym editor and a brand new Keyword Search that can be defined to help the user find what they are looking for. Also added is a way to define search Phrases as well as Substrings. Another major feature is that text in Adobe PDF and MS Office documents can be searched.

Enhanced Printed Documentation options – More flexibility in mapping your online output styles to the printed version in Microsoft® Word or Adobe PDF.

Breadcrumbs / Mini TOC – Breadcrumb navigation and/or a Mini TOC can be added with placeholders on a topic basis or with Master Pages. If preferred, breadcrumbs can be added globally with a single checkmark when generating output.

Improved Glossary – Glossary definitions which are edited are automatically updated in glossary hotspot links.

Merged Help implementation – Merged project enhancements provide a visually intuitive way to merge child projects which become part of a master TOC.

Twisties – Twisties provide both expanded and dropdown hotspots and can now have configurable images which provide a visual cue to the user.

More author-friendly enhancements

A new Styles and Formatting pod - Quickly apply, create or edit CSS styles.

World class Table, List and Autonumbering - Table designs (with many new prepared templates) can now be created or modified in the Styles editor using a graphical preview and exposed formatting tools. List support now includes enhanced handling of standard HTML Lists, MultiLevel lists and customizable autonumbering.

Easier import of MS® Word and Adobe FrameMaker files - Define common Import and Conversion Settings for consistent use of CSS and Style Mapping across all projects.

Linking MS® Word files -By linking to MS® Word files you can keep your content updated to the original source MS® Word document without re-importing each time.

Import DITA - Topic-based content into a RoboHelp HTML project. This allows the DITA author to take advantage of RoboHelp software’s rich feature set of TOC, Index, Glossary and advanced publishing options.

Enhanced Unicode and Language Support - There is now Unicode and language support at the topic and paragraph level.

FLV format now supported - For compelling eLearning and video presentations.

IFrame support - Include an external HTML or PDF inside a topic.

Single Sourcing Features - write once, distribute to many audiences

Brand new CSS Editor - Provides a graphical way to define Table Styles, and complex List Styles.

Master Pages (formerly Templates) - Help separate layout and styling from content. There are new placeholders for breadcrumbs and a “mini” Table of Contents and the Body section of each topic.

Resource Manager - Allows you to manage and reuse assets (including Images, Topics, Stylesheets, Multimedia and Snippets) across multiple Robohelp projects.

Formatted User-defined Variables (UDV) - Provide a robust way to make global changes to common blocks of content throughout many topics. A major new enhancement is the addition of formatting and the inclusion of such things as images and links which are easily created in a Design and HTML editor.

Productivity Features - Work quicker, smarter, more efficiently

Scripting - Automate with built-in scripts or create your own. The entire Adobe Extended Scripting Toolkit CS4 is included with Adobe RoboHelp 8, including many ready-made scripts to get you started.

Integration with other Adobe applications - Adobe Captivate 4, RoboScreenCapture and RoboSource Control are separate applications that are integrated into the Adobe RoboHelp 8 interface.

Custom To Do List - This popular RoboHelp favorite now allows you to edit the supplied tasks and add your own items depending on your own workflows.

Usability Features - making the work environment easier

Project Manager Enhancements - RoboHelp software’s strength has been its ability to help the author keep track of the many assets in a given project. Now, you can drag and drop topics and folders to create the same hierarchy used in the TOC. There is a choice to customize the list of files shown or switch to the traditional view with its virtual folders.

UI Enhancements - Color-coding to show pods with focus, easy close of topics in Design Editor, more tooltips on Navigation buttons and more robust right-click Context Menu support are some of the user-friendly changes to the interface.

Option to install RoboHelp for Word - You can now choose whether or not to install this application and create desktop icons. according to your preference.

Custom File Type mapping dialog - In addition to choosing your preferred HTML editor, there is an enhanced dialog to associate file extensions with your choice of applications.

More functionality added to existing features- Snippets can now be added to Popups and Drop-down hotspots and DHTML effects in non-IE browsers. Because of improved HHActiveX support, Glossaries and Browse Sequences can be included in the HTML Help (.chm) format in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) multibyte languages. Improvements have been also been made to Multiple TOC, Index and Glossary editing (including the ability to update Glossary definitions automatically.)

Posted by at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,FrameMaker,UI,PDF,DITA,Technical Communication,Publishing,Structured authoring,STC,Import comments,CMS

Hello Framers

It gives me a great feeling to connect with you in this New Year. There’s a lot ‘new’… New year, New US President and the New version of your favorite product ‘FrameMaker’ now.

Yes, your ‘FrameMaker 9’ has been announced. Please visit the link http://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/

FrameMaker 9 has a host of features which you have been asking for. The UI is considerably enhanced, there is support for hierarchical books, PDF import comments and so on…

I am sure you are eager to know about them at length. FrameMaker 9 Reviewer’s Guide gives details on FrameMaker 9. Please click below to access the guide.

URL for accessing the guide is

https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=75864237-da11-4fbf-bbcc-90cda2bed045

The guide also includes captivate demonstrations and there are several ‘try-it’ exercises. For viewing the demos, you should save the guide on your machine. You’ll need a set of files for the exercises and this is available as a zipped file at

https://share.acrobat.com/adc/document.do?docid=9339409a-b884-49ae-a06d-157d69b17b8d

Please review, try the product and please provide your feedback.

-Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication Suite

Today is clearly an important day for us.  Earlier today, Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2, FrameMaker 9, RoboHelp 8 and Captivate 4.  In addition, a new Adobe eLearning Suite has been introduced. 

Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2 now includes Photoshop CS4, besides significantly improved support for multi-channel publishing and single sourcing.  Both FrameMaker 9 and RoboHelp 8 are significantly enhanced versions of these two products. I am sure over the next few days and weeks, you will have an opportunity to learn more about these products.  Please share your feedback.

Update - RJ Jacquez has a very nice presentation on what's new in TCS2.  Click on the link to view the presentation (created with Adobe Presenter which is part of TCS2).

Posted by at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

WYSIWYG,WYSIOO,FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication Suite

WYSIOO = Absence of WYSIWYG - If you don't get what you see, and get something else, it is WYSIOO - what you saw was just one of the options - may God bless you ! Now that final output has been published, it looks ugly. WYSIOO by definition adds uncertainty about the final form of output and hence, creates ground for surprises in the publishing stage.  Surprises are never good in a production environment.  You don't want to send the content back to authors and ask them to re-write the content, because their authoring tool was not WYSIWYG and final output does not look good.

Sarah O' Keefe writes about WYSIOO and "how in ...... authoring environment, it may be impossible to provide a WYSIWYG view".  In my view, in 99% of environments, a WYSIWYG tool exists or can easily be made available to the authors. Most enterprises, small or large, publish to either of the following formats - Print, PDF, HTML Help, WebHelp, FlashHelp, Oracle Help, JavaHelp, WinHelp, Adobe AIR and so on.  An integrated toolset like Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides a WYSIWYG view in all these formats. 

1. You can author structured (XML, DITA) or unstructured content in FrameMaker for print and PDF WYSIWYG and publish through RoboHelp for online help formats - with a WYSIWYG view
2. Content is always synchronized between different output formats (no out of sync)
3. With support for conditional text and filtering based on attributes, authors can preview all the possible output options (multiple output options - dynamic publishing). 
4. You can connect to a CMS or a source control system to work in a distributed environment. 
5. You can view the aggregated content in a FrameMaker book or in a RoboHelp project (modular authoring environment)

Even for the example Sarah mentions -"a web site that allows different users to choose the look and feel of the document instead of accepting the formatting choices that the web site developer made.", it is very much possible to give a preview to the web site developer.  Have a staging server where authors can connect and see the output in different views.  In fact, it is almost mandatory to provide a preview - for any good web site, Quality Assurance demands that a testing team verifies all the possible layouts and ensure that user experience is good.

That said, there is still 1% chance that we can come up with an authoring environment, where a WYSIWYG view is absolutely not possible. If a view is not possible, how is publishing possible? Well, the creators of that environment will need to figure out an answer for that.

I believe in the maxim - “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”- you don’t really know that your dessert has come out right until you taste it.  If a author is creating the content, why don't we give them the tools to view the final output.  Empower the author with the same tool and the same template that you have created to publish the content.  Don't restrict the WYSIWYG view to only one output format - for example, print or PDF.  Give the right tools to view content in all formats you publish in and this will prevent an excessive focus on one format at the authoring stage.

Posted by at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Help,RoboHelp,Adobe AIR,TEKOM

Today, HTML Help and WebHelp are the two most popular help formats. The main difference between the two formats arises because of the viewer associated with each of the formats. HTML Help relies on CHM Viewer which is available on Windows OS and WebHelp relies on the browser which is today available for different operating systems. Since there is no way to control the functionality of the browser or CHM viewer, help authors are limited in terms of what they can offer by these two formats. In my opinion, Adobe AIR enables authors to overcome these limitations.  With Adobe AIR, you have an ability to build and customize your own viewer. With a built-in browser and support for SWF and PDF, Adobe AIR provides one of the best end-user experience.  Adobe AIR is designed with web in mind and provides a seamless online and offline experience. 

There are two other important web 2.0 trends worth mentioning here-

Participation of community in building and enhancing the content - Online Help is not a static document anymore and as products mature, knowledge available with end user community often exceeds the documented functionality. The information available in the product documentation is no longer the most comprehensive source of information for most users. Shorter product cycles and increasing importance of emerging markets (more languages to translate the content in) has resulted in a trend towards minimalist documentation. A large number of companies are now taking advantage of community participation. For example, LiveDocs (Adobe) already enables end users to comment on the content, a logical first step towards enabling community to author content.  

According to a survey of 600 technical communicators conducted between July-Oct 2008 (source: Adobe Systems), 60% of all technical communicators agreed with the following statement - "I want my end users to comment on the technical content and make these comments visible to everyone". A strong inclination to open up technical content to end user scrutiny is a very interesting development.

Compelling End User Experience
The most important goal for technical communication departments is "Delivering Best End User Experience", selected by 41% of all respondents (Source: Adobe Systems, July-Oct 2008). It was a surprise to me that cost and efficiency ranked lower than end user experience.  Does it mark an end to minimalism and focus back on effectiveness of documentation, probably, too early to say !!

I presented at TEKOM on a related topic.  To access the presentation, please click below -

Posted by at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Online Help,RoboHelp,Adobe AIR,Web 2.0,commenting,rich media,Packager

Online Help is not a static document anymore and as products mature, knowledge available with end user community often exceeds the documented functionality. The information available in the product documentation is no longer the most comprehensive source of information for most users. Shorter product cycles and increasing importance of emerging markets (more languages to translate the content in) has resulted in a trend towards minimalist documentation. A large number of companies are now taking advantage of community participation. For example, LiveDocs (Adobe) already enables end users to comment on the content, a logical first step towards enabling community to author content.

According to a survey of 600+ technical communicators over the last three months conducted by us, 60% of all respondents agreed with the following statement - "I want my end users to comment on the technical content and make these comments visible to everyone". A strong inclination to open up technical content to end user scrutiny is a very interesting development.  When we released RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR early this year, commenting on help content was a clear focus area.  If you have not seen it action, you can download it for FREE from Adobe site.

Posted by at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Adobe Technical Communication Suite

WYSISYG (What you see if what you get) is the hallmark of a good authoring and publishing tool.  Publishing process is the last stage of any technical communication project.  Having a WYSIWYG tool, whether you are authoring for Print, PDF or HTML, enables you to preview the expected output as you develop the content and reduces surprises in the end.  Surprises during the publishing stage are often the reason for project delays and nightmare for all project members. 

In XML or HTML environments, style and content are separate.  For example, while authoring XML documents in FrameMaker, the styles are applied through a template.  Similarly, in RoboHelp, while authoring HTML content, formatting information is provided by a CSS.  Both the tools provide an ability to choose different authoring and publishing templates. You can replace your CSS or template at any time during authoring or publishing. 

I have often found the argument about WYSIWOO (What you see is one option) very hard to understand. If you are publishing for two channels, you can use two templates to preview the final output (WYSIWYG view for two channels). In any case, you need these two templates for publishing, why not share these templates with the authors. 

With Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you can live link FrameMaker files (structured or unstructured) in RoboHelp project.  That is content authored in FrameMaker is always updated in RoboHelp.  You therefore get WYSIWYG not just for print but also for web output. If you can get WYSIWYG for both print and HTML and synchronized content, isn't WYSIWOO an argument in favor of poor authoring experience. 

Posted by at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,FrameMaker,Authoring,Conference,DITA,XML,Tekom

Hello Framers!

I plan to attend Tekom 2008 conference this year scheduled to be held in Wiesbaden, Germany.

As I always look forward to meeting you, our valued customers, I plan to reach Wiesbaden, Germany by November 3rd. Conference period is November 5th – 7th.

Please let me know if you would like to meet and share your thoughts, suggestions and feedback on FrameMaker. Meetings can be planned in/around Wiesbaden on Monday evening and Tuesday.

Once the conference begins, meetings can be held at the conference venue itself.

Please write to me at mahesh@adobe.com

I again look forward to this opportunity!

Thanks and regards

Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Help,Community,Web 2.0,RoboHelp,Help authoring tool,HAT

Creative Suite 4 introduces Adobe Community Help, an integrated online environment that combines content from Adobe Help, Support, Design Center, Developer Connection, and Forums—along with great online community content—so that users can easily find the best and most up-to-date resources. Access tutorials, technical support, online product help, videos, articles, tips and techniques, blogs, examples, and much more. Community Help enables users to contribute content and add comments to all learning content on Adobe.com.

Adobe Community Help is the best example of what a help system should be in a Web 2.0 world.  Just imagine, how cool will it be to have Adobe AIR integrated with Adobe Community Help!! The best help content with phenomenal online-offline experience, rich commenting interface and a great end user experience.

Posted by at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe AIR,eLearning,Brandon Hall award

RJ Jacquez, Adobe Senior Product Evangelist, recently won a bronze award in the category of “Best Innovation in Learning Technology.” RJ submitted an Adobe AIR project to this year’s Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Awards.  This entry showcased the impact Adobe AIR can have in the eLearning world, as we can create and distribute rich and engaging information to learners on different platforms in the future.  The competition included over 250 submissions and over 450 judges. In case you are interested, there is a short Adobe Captivate demo of the AIR application, click here to watch it.

Posted by at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Blog,Senior Evangelist,Technical communication,learning,HAT

Posted by at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Acrobat,Product,Blog,Rich Media

Posted by at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,FrameMaker,PDF,Text,DITA,Technical Communication,Publishing,Structured authoring,STC,Hotfix,Microsoft

Hello FrameMakers

I have some good news for you!

Some problems which you have been facing for long and have been informing me on the same are fixed now – courtesy Microsoft. Yes, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Microsoft for fixing some of our issues in a recently announced Hotfix.

This Hotfix should fix almost everything for which you used to delete ‘Fntcache.Dat’ as a workaround.

To summarize, the following problems have been taken care of with this fix:

• Save as PDF leading to a crash.
• Text dropping out of PDF created from FrameMaker.

This Hotfix is available at the following location:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=952909  (Gives details on the Hotfix)

http://support.microsoft.com/Hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=952909&kbln=en-us  (Direct Download Link)

-Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Review,Technical Communication,PDF,Adobe Technical Communication Suite

PDF and Adobe AIR are two most valuable formats for review and commenting.  If you are sending your FrameMaker documents as PDF or RoboHelp projects as Adobe AIR, you can send files through e-mail or share over a network drive. If your documents or projects are large as is the case with most technical content, you may exceed the e-mail size limit your organization has.  And if you are collaborating across locations, sharing over a network drive is not an easy option.  With Acrobat.com (free service currently in Beta), you have another alternative.  You can upload your PDFs or Adobe AIR files, select the reviewers you want to share your files with (you can manage access rights to your documents) and let them review the files at their end.  Since both PDF and Adobe AIR (if you have generated from RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR) enable you to export comments as an XML file, the comments can be received simply over e-mail.

For more details on how you can share and send files with Acrobat.com, click here.

Posted by at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Presenter,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,TCS,Technical Communication,Powerpoint,SWF in PDF

With Adobe Technical Communication Suite 1.3, you also get Adobe Presenter. Adobe Presenter enables you to rapidly convert your PowerPoint presentation into engaging Adobe Flash multimedia experiences - with a few clicks. You can also easily add narration, animations, interactivity, quizzes, and software simulations to eLearning courses.

Key capabilities

• Easily create professional Flash presentations and self-paced courses complete with narration and interactivity.
• Import and edit video in any format and export as SWF.
• Record and edit high-quality audio.
• Help ensure consistency with branding and customization.
• Deliver advanced quizzes and surveys with question pooling and randomization.
• Publish content as a PDF file, preserving all of your animations.
• Create AICC- and SCORM-compliant content.
• Integrate with Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro software to deploy, manage, deliver, and track content.

You can click here to view the detailed list of features in Adobe Presenter 7. Also, Paresh Kharya, Product Manager for Adobe Presenter recently started his blog. 

Posted by at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Acrobat 9,Acrobat 9 Pro Extended,Acrobat 3D

Adobe Technical Communication Suite has been updated today. Technical Communication Suite 1.3 now contains the new Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended.  Technical Communication Suite customers can purchase an upgrade that includes Acrobat 9 Pro Extended.  Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is a superset of Acrobat 9 Pro, all the powerful 3D features, and Adobe Presenter, Adobe LiveCycle Designer ES, and Adobe 3D Reviewer software. With Presenter, you can add video, voice-over, demos, and interactive quizzes to Microsoft PowerPoint slides, and then output to PDF for reliable, cross-platform sharing. I am sure learning professionals will love this new and exciting feature.

With Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, you can now deliver the richest, most engaging PDFs with new support for videos and portfolios. 

• Easily share video in PDF - Convert a variety of video formats to FLV for reliable, cross-platform sharing of video, animations, and applications in PDF documents. With native support for Adobe Flash technology, no additional media player is necessary for playback.
• Insert video in PDF - Embed video in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint and convert to FLV in PDF or insert FLV or H.264 video in PDF files for direct playback in Acrobat and Adobe Reader.
• Easily review video - Comment on video using any of the commenting and markup tools to add feedback to a specific frame.
• Unify the widest range of content in a PDF Portfolio - Assemble documents, drawings, e-mail, spreadsheets, and rich media — including audio, video, 3D, and maps — in a single, compressed PDF Portfolio.
• Use professionally designed templates - Choose one of many professional templates to quickly integrate content, define navigation, and add polish to your PDF Portfolio. Add your logo and include descriptions to guide recipients through the contents.

I have not listed the most compelling 3D features here (that is for another blog post).  For more details on features, please click here - http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatproextended/features/

Acrobat.com services are now available (announced simultaneously) that enable you to store and share large documents, collect form data, and review documents with virtually anyone across the world.

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication: FrameMaker Archives,FrameMaker,DocTrain,Technical Communication,XML authoring,PDF,CMS,conref,MIF,cross-reference,WebDav,STC,Publishing,Patch,p273

We heard!           We worked!           We fixed!

Hello everyone

I am just back from the great ‘DocTrain West’ Conference held at Vancouver. I was really excited to discuss the interesting ideas and thoughts you shared with me in relation to both the short term and long term strategies. As I continued meeting you people, some of you told me about a few issues still faced by you in your workflows. We have been listening to you and we have fixed these problems through yet another patch 8.0.3.

FrameMaker 8.0.3 patch is live now and it is available through Adobe Update Manager (AUM). This patch (8.0p276) must be applied on top of 8.0.2 (8.0p273) only. You can check for updates through Help->Updates Menu in FrameMaker. Currently this update is available for English, French and German installations and we would shortly make it available for Japanese too.

With the help of these fixes, following workflows are now enabled/supported:

• DITA conrefs get resolved properly.
• Extended characters do not have a preceding space when using Arial Unicode MS font.
• Higher code point characters are not dropped on MIF open.
• FM catalogs sort properly.
• Quotation marks look as per the expectation in documents with Chinese, Japanese and Korean combination fonts.
• While using combined fonts, non-Asian characters present in the Asian font are now displayed using non-Asian fonts.
• Random letters do not disappear from text line present in oval within anchored Frame.
• Use of page range in Index does not randomly add question marks left and right in the generated index file.
• Characters do not become invisible on the screen on the next line while hyphenating words just before the accented chars.
• The NextPfgTag is correctly applied when pressing Enter at the beginning of the line.
• FM does not crash when a document containing hypertext (spread over two lines) to marker is saved.
• FM spellchecker uses user.dct entries
• History palette records typing command in text line.
• FM does not crash on saving a file after deleting split-ed text line.
• Pressing space button at the start of line does not place cursor at the end of line.
• Drag does not fail even if the target is a locked range.
• For a 3D imported by reference, on moving it from hidden to show all after applying conditional text, the referenced path is not lost.
• FM does not crash when a graphic file with object properties dialog open is overwritten at the system.
• Importing object to the second file when "Quick Access Bar" and "Formatting Bar" are open and then closing the file, does not crash FM.
• Converting a cross-reference to text does not crash FrameMaker when the format of the cross-reference has been edited.
• Performing a find change using the backwards option does not lead to a crash.
• Change All operation of a character does not crash FM.
• When an equation is applied in conditional text and hidden, it does not lead to a crash.
• The hyphenation of words in old Netherland language does not change character case.
• In Netherland language words do not get corrupted when un-hyphenation is done with the words having dieresis.
• Garbage characters are not shown in Tab stop list box if a legacy file containing higher ANSI characters in Align field of decimal tab is opened in FM 8.
• Japanese tab stops now work in FM 8.

This patch has fixes for some more issues not listed above.

Please install this patch on top of 8.0.2, retest your workflows and share your feedback with me.

Thanks

-Mahesh (mahesh@adobe.com)

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 8:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Technical Communication Suite,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Lists,import,HAT,Help Authoring

Adobe RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Technical Communication Suite enable you to convert the FrameMaker paragraph styles with autonumber formats to HTML lists.  After import is complete, you can add or delete list items and the numbering of the list items will change accordingly.

a. Style Mapping - You can map the FrameMaker paragraph styles to new styles in RoboHelp and control the indentation and numbering format through the style definition.   Through style mapping, you can customize the display as bullet, (a), (i) or 1,2,3.

b. Complex and Nested lists - RoboHelp will convert complex list numbering to a single enumeration, for example, list item with number format 1.1.(a) will be enumerated as (a), preceding 1.1 will be lost.  Also, please note that RoboHelp considers the string of building blocks, for example, <n> <n> <a> etc to determine the levels in lists. 

• Named lists in FrameMaker - At present, RoboHelp does not change the level of lists based on names used in autonumber format in FrameMaker.  The solution is to use an empty building block in autonumber format to skip a level. For example, if you are using "A:<n+>." as the autonumber format for level 1 list and "a:<a+>" for level 2 list, change the autonumber format for the level2 list from"a:<a+>" to "a:< > <a+>".
• Using building blocks in Autonumber format -If you are using auto-number formats to display numbering like 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and have sub-lists 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, please make sure you are using autonumber format in level 1 paragraph style as "<n>.0" and not "<n><n=0>".  If you use the second definition in autonumber format, RoboHelp treats the paragraph style as part of level 2 list.

c. Ignore Autonumber Properties - You can also select to ignore auto-number properties for specific styles.  If you choose to ignore auto numbering, the paragraph style will not be mapped to a HTML list in RoboHelp.

If you choose not to "Convert AutoNumber to HTML list", all paragraph styles in FrameMaker will be converted to paragraphs and the numbering, bullets etc will become part of the paragraphs.  You can still map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles as mentioned in (a) above.

Posted by at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Technical Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,HAT,Online Help,XML,Training,Videos

Adobe Senior Product Evangelist, RJ Jácquez, has created three On Demand training videos to help customers get started with Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  A large number of customers have been asking us for training material on the Suite. I hope you will find this useful.  Please see the details below-

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 1 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p29205929/)

In Part 1, you will learn about leveraging live and interactive 3D models from virtual any CAD/CAM/CAE software in your technical and instructional documents using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  This training video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with the presenter, and experience first-hand how to convert a 3D CAD file into a highly compressed 3D PDF document and how the included 3D Toolkit software allows you to reuse this model in FrameMaker and then generate an interactive and rich PDF document, that you can distribute to anyone using the free Adobe Reader. The video also guides you through the steps on how to further polish your 3D models using 3D materials and by adding animation that shows your end-users how to disassemble the model.

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 2 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p25426010/)

In Part 2, you will learn how to supplement your technical and instructional design documents with engaging Adobe Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes in the Flash format using the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  This training video includes all exercise files needed for you to follow along with the presenter and experience first-hand how to create engaging Captivate demonstrations, simulations and quizzes that can be imported into FrameMaker documents and saved as PDF files, that end-users can playback using the free Adobe Reader.  The video also guides you through the steps needed to add a printing poster in FrameMaker and how to generate a single .SWF file from Captivate, which includes the playback bar in the PDF file, as well as other best practices.

NEW Training Video! Getting Started with the Technical Communication Suite: Part 3 (http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p13101233/)

In Part 3, you will learn about adding FrameMaker books and documents in RoboHelp as live links and reusing FrameMaker content for creating Online Help systems, Searchable Knowledge bases, Performance Support systems and even Policies and Procedures.  Just like the first two, the exercise files are also included in case you want to go over the integration features yourself.

Besides Adobe Technical Communication Suite, there are training videos for Adobe FrameMaker 8 and Adobe RoboHelp 7 available on Help Resource Center.  Adobe Certified Trainers (for example, John Daigle is a certified trainer for RoboHelp and Captivate) can help you with formal training, if required.  If you are looking for formal training, you can locate Adobe Authorized Trainers in your area from Adobe site.

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Adobe AIR,Linux,DITA,Online Help

With Adobe Technical Communication Suite and RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR (free download), you can now generate Adobe AIR output when you are authoring documents in FrameMaker.  As part of Adobe Techncial Communication Suite, you can add FrameMaker documents and books as live links in RoboHelp and generate WebHelp output from RoboHelp.  RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR enables you to generate Adobe AIR output from the WebHelp output.  Adobe AIR output comes with several advantages - please check out Adobe Labs page for more details.

Generating Online Help for DITA content

If you are authoring in DITA, it is easy to convert the DITAMap file into a FrameMaker book or a FrameMaker document (see DITA menu in FrameMaker 8 below) and generate the HTML help using RoboHelp.  If you update your DITA topics later, you can re-generate the FrameMaker document and RoboHelp will allow you to generate Online Help in two clicks (Update and Publish). 

Another alternative for publishing DITA content to RoboHelp is to (a) create HTML files through DITA Open toolkit, (b) bring these HTML files in RoboHelp and (c) run publish/generate commands.  RoboHelp also supports command line compile and publish.  For generating overnight builds, you can run a batch command to download the source files from source control system, compile and publish the output.

Do you have a custom help viewer for cross-platform applications?

Online Help using Adobe AIR is an attractive alternative for cross-platform applications.  Over the last month, I met several customers who write custom help viewers to support online help for cross-platform applications.  This requires additional cost of creating and maintaining the helpviewer application.  Helpviewer is not a simple application, it requires functionality for creating mini-TOC, breadcrumbs, browse sequences, support for skins or templates, support for PDF, SWF and other dynamic content and search functionality for multiple languages.  If you are planning to add Web 2.0 features, there is additional effort required to create a commenting infrastructure. With Adobe AIR and RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR, you now have an easy out of the box cross-platform option available to you.

FYI- Adobe AIR for Linux (alpha) is now available on Adobe Labs.

Posted by at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,FileName Markers,Custom filenames

You can create custom filenames for topics in RoboHelp, when you add FrameMaker documents to RoboHelp as live link.  You don't need to use filename markers in FrameMaker.  Since RoboHelp supports conditional tags and imports the text in FrameMaker which has conditional text setting applied, the same workflow can be created using conditional text.  This solution relies on the fact that RoboHelp creates topic names based on the text of the style you paginate on.  

1. Please add the specific file names (say, FileName1, FileName2, FileName3, FileName4) just before the topic headings in FrameMaker which correspond to these dialog names.

2. Assign a unique style to these names (say, "FrameMakerFileNameStyle").

3. Apply a conditional text to these names in FrameMaker (say, "FileNameTag").

4. Add another style in RoboHelp (say"RoboHelpFileNameStyle").

5. Map the FrameMaker style "FrameMakerFileNameStyle" to RoboHelp style "RoboHelpFileNameStyle".  You can map the remaining styles as you had done earlier. No change is required.

6. Select "RoboHelpFileNameStyle" as the style to paginate on (instead of Heading 1 or Heading 2).

7. Also, select to create a TOC based on FrameMaker TOC which uses Heading1 or Heading2 styles in FrameMaker. Note that filenames are not same as the TOC entries, RoboHelp project explorer will list topics by filename. However, if you have a hierarchical TOC in FrameMaker (using styles Heading1, Heading2, Heading3) etc, RoboHelp will convert the TOC and maintain hierarchy. 

8. Select "paratext_no_num" as the option for topic name pattern.  This option asks RoboHelp to generate filenames based on the text of the style you paginate on and remove the autonumbering from the text.  

Please click on Continue to view the Captivate demo below.

On Import of content in RoboHelp,

1. RoboHelp creates a TOC which mirrors FrameMaker TOC (the additional text is not reflected here)

2. RoboHelp creates filenames based on the text added (for example, FileName1, FileName2, FileName3, FileName4 etc.)

3. RoboHelp shows the custom filenames  (FileName1, FileName2, FileName3, FileName4 etc.) as part of each topic with conditional text (FileNameTag) applied.

4. In the SSL, exclude the conditional text "FileNameTag" and generate output. You get your TOC, topics are also displayed fine without the additional text.

Please click on Continue to view the Captivate demo below.

Posted by at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe RoboHelp,MadCap Flare,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Converter,transition,upgradeFlare to RoboHelp Migration

As you all know, RoboHelp experienced some turbulent times in the past while it was with Macromedia. I believe RoboHelp was declared “Dead” in one of the WritersUA conference. This led some of RoboHelp customers to migrate to other products and most importantly MadCap Flare as it was positioned as a replacement for RoboHelp. But as soon as Adobe got hold of RoboHelp and Captivate, things changed. We could clearly see we had all the products (FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat) that a Technical Communicator would ever need and hence that led to creation of a brand new Suite – Adobe Technical Communication Suite. Since Adobe RoboHelp is one of the main applications in this suite, we have invested heavily in the same and have released two versions of the same. The last version – Adobe RoboHelp 7 is considered as the biggest release in the history of the product.

While we were developing products and gearing up for the Technical Communication suite, we attended a number of conferences and met a number of Technical Communicators – the actual users of the products. One of the biggest requests that we heard from a small community was a migration path back from Flare to RoboHelp. This community includes those who were early adopters of MadCap Flare and had made a change of the Authoring tool while there were fears of RoboHelp being “Dead”. We wanted to help these customers come back to RoboHelp, but at the same time we did not want to invest in writing this piece of code as it was targeted at a very small community. We also did a survey and posted a blog to gauge interest and size of this community (refer blog posted by Vivek Jain - Migrating from Flare to RoboHelp). We found that this community was not growing as the migration had stopped as we succeeded in establishing faith back in RoboHelp by releasing Adobe RoboHelp 6 back in January 2007.  All of this led us not to invest in this space.

However, John Daigle of Evergreen Online Learning, LLC has worked on a utility that can help this small community of customers (existing Flare users who want to come back RoboHelp). It is available free of cost and can be downloaded by filling just 6 form entries. You can get one from here - http://www.showmethedemo.com/flare-to-robohelp/flare-to-robohelp.htm.

Though John did apprise me that he was working on a utility and asked me to answer some simple questions from time to time, but I never asked and he never shared what exactly he was doing. But when I saw this working today, I was completely amazed at how easy, simple and fast it is. So if you are a Flare customer and want to convert your project to a RoboHelp, all you need to do is, download the converter utility (1 minute job) and specify the Flare project that you want to convert and provide a name of the new RoboHelp project and press OK (another 1 minutes) and you are done. Double click the RoboHelp project (the .xpj file) and you are up and running. If that was not enough, he has another gift for you - he is providing the source code of this utility to the end customers under Common Public License again free of cost.

I will now be able to greet Long Beach and STC Minneapolis customers who had asked for a migration path with a smile on my face – Welcome BACK to RoboHelp. And this won’t have happened without John’s initiative. I personally thank John for investing in this converter business and working for the RoboHelp Community.

- Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RoboHelp,Adobe AIR,Technical Communication,Adobe Technical Suite,Help Authoring,Online Help,HAT

RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR (Beta) provides two skins (a) Multi-Tab Accordion and UniPane.  Each of these skins comes with several themes (color schemes) to choose from. In this post, I share a few screenshots of a Customer Care project (one of the sample projects which is part of Adobe RoboHelp 7) published using Multi-Tab Accordion skin. 

You can now open more than one tab in the help. At times you have more than two topics which are of interest and you want to open both of them (from search results or from the TOC menu).  However, CHM or WebHelp don't provide an ability to open multiple tabs in the same help window.  In the screenshot below, you may also notice the mini-TOC to the right side of the content window.  Also note that text of the content pane automatically reflows to adjust for the mini-TOC. Thus, mini-TOC is not hiding any of the content.

You can also add comments to the bottom of each page (see below). Comments are at present stored in the local repository on the client machine.

You can also add favorites - please see the Favorites tab at the bottom of the left pane (see below).

On the top right hand corner, you can list resources (for example, corporate web site, support forum link etc.).  If you will want to see how your project looks in Adobe AIR, please download the Beta from Adobe Labs.

Posted by at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe RoboHelp 7,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Patch,Update Details,Issues Resolved,Security Update

I was short on time when I wrote my previous post and hence did not mention the exact list of issues that have been resolved in the recent update to Adobe RoboHelp 7. I thought that getting out the message was much more important than describing the issues. Today, I will improve upon that by listing down all the issues fixed in Adobe RoboHelp 7.0.1 (when you apply the Update the version number changes from 7 to 7.0.1)

Rather than writing out the issues myself, I thought it might be more accurate to just Cut and Paste contents from the "Read Me" itself. So here is the list of issues:

********(from Adobe RoboHelp 7.0.1 "Read Me")********

List of major issues resolved in the Update:

• Search does not work properly in CHM output generated in complex asian languages.
• When an X5 Project is upgraded to RoboHelp 7.0 some topics may remain empty in certain scenarios.
• Browse sequence doesn’t get auto generated via TOC on importing complex Frame maker file.
• If style sheet is accessed by clicking Format | Styles, then after style sheet creation changes to the styles could not be made successfully in the first attempt. The dialog has to be reopened to make changes.
• Any formatting changes to a paragraph could not be saved as a paragraph style on the fly using Formatting toolbar.
• Search does not work properly in CHM output generated in few languages.
• When an X5 project is upgraded to RoboHelp 7.0 topic files-names might get converted to Title Case.
• Images with Text wrapping applied do not appear in Printed Documentation output.
• DHTML effects applied on styles do not get automatically updated without opening the topic.
• Security vulnerability related to cross-site scripting attacks in WebHelp and FlashHelp Single Source Layouts has been fixed.
• Frame Maker style with DHTML effects when mapped to a RoboHelp style do not retain DHTML effects on mapping.
• While renaming a Snippet or a UDV, the Topics opened in the editor may get saved without a prompt.
• While viewing content in Mozilla Firefox, some of the TOC Books may not open until any topic is opened manually. Additionally the default topic is not shown if it is under some book.
• In certain scenarios hotspots created on Shed files are missing in the FlashHelp output for RoboHelp for Word.
• Conditional Build Tags when applied differently in multiple cells of a table do not appear properly in output.
• Previewing of an unsaved topic results in saving the topic without giving any prompt.
• HTML topics may not get generated if a structured Frame Maker file is imported or added to a RoboHelp project.
• In case of multiple cross reference markers applied to paragraphs each linked to different sources in a FrameMaker file, the hyperlinks are not formed on importing or linking the file to RoboHelp project.
• Inserting image with path more than 120 characters do not work properly.

****************************************

As mentioned in the list we have also fixed the vulnerability related to cross-site scripting attacks in WebHelp and FlashHelp. You can read more about this on the following Security Bulletin published by Adobe:

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb08-05.html

In case you have any queries around the Adobe RoboHelp 7 Update, please leave a comment and I shall try to answer the same.

Thanks,
Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

FrameMaker,Chautauqua,Technical Communication,XML authoring,XML document,PDF,Review,Commenting

Hi

I got so occupied with various activities here that I just realized it’s been over 2 months since I made my last post. Now I’ll try to be regular.

So folks, I hope you have finalized your plans for the ‘FrameMaker Chautauqua’ conference. I too have planned to attend.

I am looking forward to use this opportunity by meeting you at the conference.

Thanks and regards

Mahesh K Gupta

Product Manager – Adobe FrameMaker

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,track text edits,Technical Communication,XML authoring,XML document,PDF,Review,Commenting

With FrameMaker 8, we introduced an ability to track edits in text. The biggest benefit is in the review workflow.  As we started planning the documentation for the next version of FrameMaker, it became obvious that track text edits in FrameMaker 8 will be a great time saver for both the teams – the product development team (which reviews the content) and the documentation team (which develops the content).  Review is fundamental to ensuring content completeness and accuracy and with incremental development models gaining popularity, content development is also incremental.  This increases the importance of managing content changes through milestones.

I am sure a number of FrameMaker customers are already using from this new feature. Do share your feedback.

Note - For details on what is tracked and what is not, please refer to FrameMaker User Guide.

Posted by at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical Communication,Revenue,Policies and proceures,HAT,knowledge base,XML documents

Technical communication goes beyond in-product documentation.  Online help, knowledge bases, policies and procedures, regulatory submissions, tutorials, training materials and data sheets are also technical communication. While in-product documentation is mandated by law in many countries, there is a business reason for technical communication which goes beyond meeting the legal requirement. 

In general, technical communication serves both internal and external customers.  For example, HR and finance departments aim to improve the adoption of its offerings.  Employee Share Purchase Program run by an employer can be considered as an offering from HR and finance departments. Employees of the organization are internal customers and documentation of policies and procedures is important for the success of the program. 

Most products or services follow a typical adoption cycle – awareness (get customer’s attention), create interest which may lead to a favorable evaluation and hence, a desire to purchase the product.  Marketing communication can help in generating awareness and interest, while technical communication plays a strong role in converting this interest into a desire to purchase or use the offering.  This is especially important in complex applications or business processes. 

If technical communication is effective, more customers understand the offering in shortest possible time and hence, lead to higher sales or adoption.  For example,

• If you use a Captivate demo to illustrate a workflow, more customers will know how to use the product.  In the example of Employee Share Purchase Program, a demonstration of how to log-in to a system, complete the forms, and use the share trading site can increase the subscription to the program.
• If a 3D model of an automobile assembly is used (vis-à-vis a screenshot), it is much easier for customers and vendors to comprehend how their product will fit in the assembly.

Products and services which have strong partner networks (trainers, developers, consultants, vendors, channel or technology partners), it is important to have a common shared understanding about the offering and hence, a need for more effective technical communication. 

In my opinion, technical communication can drive revenue.  What do you think? Please share your opinion.

Posted by at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HAT,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Technical Communication Suite,Online Help,Knowledge Base,Print,XML,DITA

I am seeing a number of debates happening across support forums and mailing lists about which authoring tool (FrameMaker or RoboHelp) is better suited for a specific purpose.  Both RoboHelp and FrameMaker are really powerful authoring tools for technical communication.  FrameMaker provides a print WYSIWYG authoring environment and is the best Print and PDF publishing tool.  RoboHelp provides an HTML WYSIWYG authoring environment and is the best publishing tool for knowledge bases and online help with support for largest number of output formats. RoboHelp supports Dynamic HTML effects while auto-numbering and cross-references are major strengths of FrameMaker. 

Both FrameMaker and RoboHelp provide

• strong support for single sourcing including variables, conditional tags and snippets (text insets in FrameMaker),
• support for multiple TOCs, indexes, glossaries,
• support for tables, images, Captivate demos, Flash, 3D PDFs,
• template based authoring,
• support for long documents (FrameMaker books often exceed 1,000 pages) and large projects (RoboHelp projects often exceed 1500 topics) and so on.  

With Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you don't need to choose between RoboHelp and FrameMaker.  You get both of them (with Captivate and Acrobat 3D) at an attractive price. Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides a complete solution for technical communication.  Adobe Technical Communication Suite is probably the right product for you, if any of the following holds true -

• PDF/print is an important output format for you (need FrameMaker and Acrobat), or
• You send documentation for review to subject matter experts, customers and vendors (need Acrobat 3D for PDF based review and commenting workflow along with FrameMaker or RoboHelp), or
• You are publishing or planning to publish for multiple channels – PDF or print and online help (need FrameMaker, Acrobat and RoboHelp). 
• You are using Structured FrameMaker for authoring XML documents and want a more flexible solution than XSL transforms and reduce the cost to customize and manage XSL transforms for every minor change needed in the Online Help output (need FrameMaker and RoboHelp), or
• You are authoring in DITA and need a better publishing tool than DITA open toolkit (need FrameMaker, Acrobat and RoboHelp), or
• You want to improve the effectiveness of your technical communication by using Flash movies or Adobe Captivate demos to illustrate the workflows (need Captivate along with RoboHelp or FrameMaker), or
• You are part of an industry where 3D visualization can substantially improve  effectiveness of technical communication, for example, manufacturing - engineering, automobiles, construction, aerospace, real estate and so on (need Acrobat 3D with RoboHelp or FrameMaker), or
• You are currently using or will use two or more products from the Suite (FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D). 

I certainly believe that above scenarios hold true for most of the technical communicators. In a later post, I will discuss further on this topic.

Posted by at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Technical Communication Suite,FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Captivate,Acrobat,3D model,Online Help,Knowledge bases,XML authoring

The year 2007 has been an exciting one and as I look forward to 2008, it promises to be even better.  We had 6 product releases in 2007 - Adobe RoboHelp 6 in January, Acrobat 3D ver 8 in May, Adobe Captivate 3 and Adobe FrameMaker 8 in July, Adobe RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Technical Communication Suite in October.  The launch of Adobe Technical Communication Suite is a major milestone for us.  It brings together the best in class applications and provides an end-to-end solution to all technical communication needs.  It is heartening to see the response to the Suite. It is way beyond my expectation! Thank you.

During the last two years, we have expanded our engineering teams for FrameMaker and Captivate and created a new team for RoboHelp.  Overall, we have a larger and may I say more experienced and skilled engineering team than anyone else in the business.  Both customers and industry experts have acknowledged the impact we have made in the year 2007. FrameMaker 8 has been rated as the biggest release in a decade and we have received similar comments for RoboHelp 7.  Captivate 3 surprised everyone with the features it delivered in short period of time.  Acrobat 3D continues to create new milestones in innovation - enabling new workflows which no one thought were possible.

Lastly, a big thank you for hundreds of comments, suggestions and personal e-mails we have received. We started this team blog in January 2007. It's almost a year now and I must say that it has been a rewarding experience. Your feedback is valuable and I look forward to continuing this dialog.

Wish you a very happy new year 2008!

Posted by at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,Knowledge base software,HAT,Single Sourcing

While responding to one of the comments, I realized the need for summarizing the best practices for single sourcing content from FrameMaker to RoboHelp. We have several posts on this workflow, which is now available as part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

1. Importing the TOC and the Index - RoboHelp supports multiple TOCs, Index and Glossary.  When you add a FrameMaker book as live link in RoboHelp, you can create a new TOC and a new Index to import the FrameMaker TOC and Index entries.  This enables you to manage FrameMaker content separately inside RoboHelp. As a next step, you can add TOC and Index as placeholder in the master project TOC and Index respectively.  You should also properly format the TOC in FrameMaker before you import the content in RoboHelp. To remove Auto Numbering from appearing in the TOC entries, please select "Ignore Auto number" during style mapping for those styles which are used to create TOC in FrameMaker.  For Index entries, you should use Index Markers in FrameMaker.

2. Defining Content Sensitive Help -For defining context sensitive help, please choose any custom marker and apply it at the beginning of the paragraphs in the FrameMaker source files.

Update (April 16, 2008) - Please apply RoboHelp patch 7.0.1. Also, for generating custom filenames for topics in RoboHelp, please see this workaround based on conditional text settings in FrameMaker.

3. Print and Help Specific Content - You may want to use conditional text to clearly identify the online and print specific content in FrameMaker. In both FrameMaker and RoboHelp, you can define a conditional expression to filter print and online specific content. For example, if you want to use two different image size in Print and Online Help, you may want to include both of them in FrameMaker and apply conditional text to identify which one is for print and help.

4. Style Mapping - RoboHelp enables you to map styles from FrameMaker to RoboHelp. You can map FrameMaker paragraph and character styles to RoboHelp styles, which will automatically reformat your FrameMaker content for publication in RoboHelp. In addition, you can also specify new definitions for FrameMaker cross-reference formats (e.g., to remove page numbers from cross-references in RoboHelp output).  If you are using styles to control spacing between text and images, you may chose "Ignore output" for these styles during the mapping. If you want to pass through content in RoboHelp with a user defined tag, you can specify that as project settings in RoboHelp.

You can export and import the style mapping file in RoboHelp and re-use it across projects.

Update (April 16, 2008)- You can however create dynamic HTML effects like mouse over through style definitions in RoboHelp.  For drop down and expanding hotspots, you may want to check-out a workaround posted on Adobe RoboHelp forums (Category- FrameMaker Integration) .

5. Converting Auto Numbering to HTML lists - You can convert auto numbering styles to HTML lists. This is generally preferred if the FrameMaker document does not include complex numbering e.g., multilevel section numbering 1.1.(a).  You can also select specific styles in FrameMaker for which Auto numbering should be ignored.  For example, if you have auto numbering defined for FrameMaker styles SectionName and you don't want sections to be converted to HTML lists, please select "Ignore Auto Number" for the style SectionName.

Update - If convert autonumbers to HTML list is selected, please "ignore autonumbering" for FrameMaker styles which are used in the FrameMaker TOC. This is important when you are importing the TOC as defined in FrameMaker. In sequence of processing, autonumbers are converted to HTML lists before RoboHelp generates the TOC.

6. Images - If you have equations or images in FrameMaker, please make sure they are part of an Anchored Frame.  RoboHelp can convert the images (including equations) in FrameMaker to PNG, GIF, BMP or JPG and you can define the default format which RoboHelp should use to convert the images from FrameMaker.  If you are using PNG, GIF, BMP or JPG in FrameMaker, these formats will be retained and only other formats like TIFF will be changed to the default selected by you.  This setting is available in RoboHelp at Tools-> Options -> FrameMaker Documents.

7. Updating Styles for Linked FrameMaker Books - RoboHelp allows you to edit style information and other project specific settings. You can change the styles either by changing the style sheet in RoboHelp - fmstyles.css or changing the style mapping.

8. Updating RoboHelp Content when FrameMaker document changes - You can update the RoboHelp content with a click of a button when FrameMaker content changes. RoboHelp also provides visual indication if the content is out of synchronization with FrameMaker document.

9. Preserving Content Changes in RoboHelp - To handle special situations which may require the RoboHelp content to be out of sync from FrameMaker documents either for short duration or for small set of topics, you can preserve content changes in RoboHelp for linked FrameMaker Books.

Additional links- Adobe User Forum for FrameMaker and RoboHelp Integration, Video training on FrameMaker and RoboHelp Integration

Please let me know if you want more details on this workflow. I will try to keep this post updated as we go forward.

Posted by at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Knowledge base software,help authoring tool,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,Single Sourcing

Adobe RoboHelp 7 has one of the most innovative and powerful feature of single sourcing, support for hierarchical TOC and hierarchical Index.  When you bring content from several sources in RoboHelp, RoboHelp enables you to add that content in a specific folder.  For example, for a FrameMaker book, RoboHelp creates a master folder at the book level and sub-folders each representing the Chapters in the book. 

In addition, you can create a separate TOC and Index for each of the FrameMaker documents you add as a live link in Adobe Technical Communication Suite.  In the example here, Agreement TOC and Agreement Index are created specifically for the FrameMaker book - Experience Bank. 

By enabling multiple TOC, Index and Glossary, RoboHelp allows to manage your content in a separate space.  When you update the content in FrameMaker document, the TOC and Index for the linked FrameMaker books are automatically updated.

In RoboHelp 7, you can now add a TOC inside a TOC as a placeholder enabling a hierarchical structure for TOC. Similarly, you can now add an Index inside an Index as placeholder enabling a hierarchical structure for Indices.  This is a really powerful functionality for single sourcing.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions.

Posted by at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

RoboHelp,Help Authoring Tool,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,Knowledge Base,3D,Acrobat 3D,Knowledge base software

In one of my earlier posts, I elaborated on creating PDF with 3D models (by including them in FrameMaker).

You can also include 3D models in a Knowledge base and Online Help. As part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you get Acrobat 3D and RoboHelp.  Acrobat 3D enables you to capture 3D models from several CAD applications and convert the 3D model to a PDF.  And you can include the PDF file containing the 3D model as a baggage file in RoboHelp. RoboHelp enables you to publish the PDF along with Online Help or a Knowledge Base.

Please notice the TOC entry in RoboHelp refers to the baggage file.

The FlashHelp output of this simple projects contains the PDF which can be accessed as part of a Knowledge Base and Online Help.  Please click on the button to start the Adobe Captivate demo below.

With single sourcing workflow from FrameMaker to RoboHelp for HTML publishing and powerful content aggregation functionality available in RoboHelp, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities.  Do explore more and share your experiences.

Posted by at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Multiple TOCs,Indexes and Glossaries,Adobe RoboHelp,HAT,Content Aggregation,Single Sourcing

Though, I had mentioned in my previous post that I would be talking about Translation Workflows, but then I realized that I need to first talk about a new Single Sourcing feature that we have built in Adobe RoboHelp 7 - Multiple TOCs, Indexes and Glossaries.

Now using RoboHelp 7, you can define multiple TOCs, Indexes and Glossaries in a single project.  But why would you want to have multiple TOCs in a single project? You can do that for different audiences of the same project - say Standard user and Advanced users or for different output types – say print and Web output or Help for two different flavors of a Project – Basic, Standard, and Professional or for supporting different languages say – English, French, German and Japanese. For achieving single souring in true sense, you need to have multiple TOCs, Indexes and Glossaries.

Since there can be multiple TOCs, Indexes and Glossaries in a single RoboHelp project, we need a mechanism to manage the same. And for this very reason, there is a change in the way TOCs are handled in RoboHelp 7. We have moved all the management to Project Manager. So in case you want to define a new TOC or edit an existing TOC or delete a TOC, you will have to go to the Project Manager and access Multiple Table of Contents folder.  Indexes and Glossaries are also managed through Project Manager.

Apart from this, as you are already aware, Adobe RoboHelp 7 supports Multiple Document Interface (MDI), so it allows you to open up multiple TOCs and work across them – copy paste items from one TOC to another etc. This is how the multiple TOCs look like when you open them up in RoboHelp 7.

One important thing to note is that there is a default TOC in every project. The Default as the name signifies is the TOC used when you do not specify a TOC while generating a SSL. You have the ability to use any of the defined TOCs when you generate a SSL.

As you see in the above snapshot, most of the times there is a big overlap in the TOCs. As you see in the snapshot above, there are two TOCs – one for Customer Care executives and one for Mortgage Specialist executives. Since, the knowledge bases for the Mortgage Specialist executives is always a super set of the knowledge base for basic Customer Care executives (As depicted in the snapshot above), if you make a change in the Customer Care TOC, you will be forced to redo the changes in the Mortgage Specialist TOC. RoboHelp 7 provides a yet another Single Sourcing featuring called Place Holder TOC in the new TOC Editor. To achieve single sourcing what we can do is remove the first three folders in the Mortgage Specialist TOC (the ones that correspond to Customer Care TOC) and instead add a TOC Place Holder for Customer Care TOC as shown in the snapshot below.

Now when you generate a SSL using the Mortgage Specialist TOC, the Customer Care TOC Place Holder will get replaced by the actual contents of TOC at the time of generation. You can view TOC Place Holder as a kind of a reference to another TOC that will be picked at the time to final generation.

I hope I made some sense in the above explanation. We can also use TOC Place Holder for aggregating content defined across multiple TOCs. Let’s discuss how we can achieve the same. Suppose there are two authors working on the same Knowledge base – one is responsible for general Customer Care Knowledge base, however the other one is concerned just about the stuff that relates to Mortgage Specialist executives.  The goal is t to generate a single master knowledge base which will contain all the topics defined in the RoboHelp project.

To achieve this, what we can do is, ask the first author to work on the Default TOC, i.e. Customer Care and ask the other author to define a new TOC, say Mortgage Specialist. However, this time we will ask him to just add the Mortgage Specialist related stuff to this TOC. Probably the TOC’s will look something like this:

Now for aggregating the two TOCs, you can either define a third TOC with two Place Holders (one for Customer Care and the other one for Mortgage Specialist) or you can add a Place Holder in Customer Care TOC that references to the Mortgage Specialist. The first approach is generally useful when you have a number of TOC Place Holders. So we shall follow the second approach in the demo below:

All the above examples are shown using the Customer Care Sample Project that we ship with Adobe RoboHelp 7. Index and Glossary have similar features and are implemented in the same fashion in Adobe RoboHelp 7. It’s now your turn to start playing with these Single Sourcing features and to see how best you can make use of the same in your real life projects.

I know I have exceeded the limit that an ideal blog post should be but it would be incomplete if I do not mention that RoboHelp 7 also allows you to add User Defined Variables in TOC entries and lets usage of Conditional Build Tags to TOC items (Books, topics etc). All these features put together result in most powerful Single Sourcing capabilities that no other HAT provides at this moment.

So to summarize:

1. Create as many multiple TOCs, Indexes and Glossaries as you like. They can be given unique names to help manage them.
2. Copy/Paste editing works across multiple TOC/Index/Glossary.
3. Aggregate multiple TOCs, Indexes using the Place Holder feature.
4. Use User Defined Variables while defining the TOC items.
5. Apply Conditional Build tags on TOC items.
6. At time of publishing, your custom TOC/Index/Glossary can be chosen on the fly.
7. Translation workflows are enhanced because you can have a separate TOC/Index/Glossary for each language.
8. RoboSource Control integration is enabled.

You guessed it correctly, we are now set to talk about Translation Workflows and I shall do that in my next post.

Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Adobe Technical Communication Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT,HTML publishing,knowledge base,knowledge base software

Adobe Technical Communication Suite enables a single sourcing workflow from FrameMaker to RoboHelp for HTML publishing.  While it is ideal to maintain all the content in FrameMaker, there are special situations which may require the RoboHelp content to be out of sync from FrameMaker documents either for short duration or for small set of topics.  These special situations can relate to project deadlines or project requirements which make the process of maintaining a single source difficult.

Adobe RoboHelp 7, as part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite, provides a new and really powerful functionality of managing this Out of Synchronization behavior.  First, it provides a visual indicator the moment there is a change in RoboHelp content for a Linked FrameMaker document.  Second, it allows you to select a set of topics which you want to preserve when the content is updated again.  Since you can manage this at HTML topic level, you can control this at a granular level. Lastly, you can also delete topics and not regenerate these topics during the next update.

Here is a Captivate demo of this feature (Update - I am adding a "Click to Start" button on the demos - Thanks Rick for your suggestion). Do share your comments and suggestions with me.

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication Suite,Help Authoring,HAT,Captivate demo

In my previous post, I showed how a style can be edited in RoboHelp by editing the style sheet fmstyles.css.  After you edit the style, the change is preserved on further updates in RoboHelp for changes in the linked FrameMaker book. In the attached Captivate demo (Update- I have added a "Click to Start" button to the demo), I show how you can create or edit a style in fmstyles.css, map it to a FrameMaker style (which was previously mapped to "Source") and update the content in RoboHelp. 

Note - When you make the change in fmstyles.css or style mapping, always use "Force Update" to update the linked content.

Posted by at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Technical Communication,Adobe,DITA,Authoring,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Suite

FrameMaker 8.0.1 patch is live now. This patch has fixes for several reported problems. The key areas include:

1. PDF: Text going behind tables, tag structure not correct as per accessibility standards etc.
2. XML / DITA: Fixes for crashers, handling invalid input, bugs related to Unicode etc. Apart from this, two functionality workflows that we have fixed are:
   1. Enabling round-tripping of user-variables in DITA files
   2. Enabling Track Changes in DITA file
3. Conditional expressions for Books
4. Track Text Edits: Crashers, some workflow issues. There are fixes for some Japanese locale specific bugs too.

These bug fixes are in addition to localization, installation, FDK, Server, documentation and Suite features.

These patches are available at the following locations:

UNIX - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=unix

Windows - http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=22&platform=win

 - Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 7:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Technical Communication Suite,HAT,Help Authoring Tool,Single Source,HTML publishing

Adobe Technical Communication Suite enables a HTML publishing workflow from FrameMaker to RoboHelp.  While adding FrameMaker files as live links in RoboHelp, you can map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles.  RoboHelp uses a specific style sheet fmstyles.css which can be modified for custom needs. 

1. The style information in RoboHelp can also be edited after the content has been imported in RoboHelp.  Please make sure you make these style changes in fmstyles.css since all the style sheets in the RoboHelp project for FrameMaker files are derived from this style sheet.  If you make changes in this style sheet, all the linked chapters from the FrameMaker book will inherit the change which will be consistently applied across the project.

2. If you want to edit the style information specific to a Chapter (from the FrameMaker book), you may want to create a style in FrameMaker for that Chapter. By creating a unique style specific to that Chapter, you can now map this style to any RoboHelp style. If needed, you can also add styles in fmstyles.css.  The style sheet can be edited using RoboHelp User Interface.

I am including a Captivate demo of how you can edit style information for linked FrameMaker files (Update- I have added a "Click to Start" button to the demo). I hope you will find this useful.  Please let me know your comments.

Posted by at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

I have been talking about various features and settings for linking FrameMaker documents in RoboHelp. Today, I’ll take you through the functionality offered when the linking of files is already done. Yes, let’s see how you can update these files.

If you want to change some of the settings you specified at the time of linking files, right-click on the linked file and select ‘Properties’.

‘FrameMaker Document Settings’ Dialog opens up. All the setting dialogs which were seen during the initial linking can be seen as tabs here.

You can choose to update a particular chapter by changing the settings for that particular chapter or you can update the settings for the whole book (right click the book icon and then change properties).

Once settings are changed, the icon changes to red representing an internal un-synchronization.

As can be seen below, if properties are changed for the whole book, all child level entries too get unsynchronized.

Right-clicking an icon gives the update options. Just choose whether you want a simple Update or Force Update. One the selection is made, RoboHelp will quickly update your files taking care of your updated settings!

- Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

Table of Contents (TOC) is an important part of FrameMaker books. RoboHelp recognizes this importance and allows the conversion of your source FrameMaker TOC to the corresponding TOC in RoboHelp.

I’ll explain the steps with an example. At the time of importing/linking FrameMaker book,

1. Place a check in the ‘ConvertFrameMaker Table of Contents’ box in the Content Settings dialog.

2. Click to open the Browse FrameMaker file dialog.

3. Navigate to the source files folder, select the source TOC and click ‘Open’. By Default, the TOC path would be populated with the first TOC file in the book. If your book has multiple TOCs, you can choose the one of your interest.

4. Select the Create new associated TOC radio button. This will create a RoboHelp TOC for the imported FrameMaker topics.

5. Enter a name for the this TOC. For our example, I have called it ‘TOC1’.

On completion of the import process, ‘TOC1’ would be created under ‘Table of Contents’ folder in the ‘Project Manager’ pod as shown below.

Double clicking ‘TOC1’ would open the TOC.

Snap-shot of the source TOC is shown below. We see that ‘Filter By Attribute’ is a book in the RoboHelp TOC. Topics under this book are same and in the same order as in the source TOC.

The styles in your FrameMaker TOC determine which headings become books, sub-books, or pages in the RoboHelp TOC. These levels are based on the following elements in the decreasing order of priority:

• Left-most indent
• Font Size
• Font Weight

Note: Headings with indented items are converted to book entries.

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 more information, please visit my following blog post

http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2007/10/content_aggregation_workflow_i_1.html

- Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool,HAT

Perhaps the most important, and most powerful, feature of the FrameMaker import process is the style mappings. You can map FrameMaker paragraph and character styles to RoboHelp styles, which will automatically reformat your FrameMaker content for publication in RoboHelp. In addition, you can also specify:

• New definitions for FrameMaker cross-reference formats (e.g., to remove page numbers from cross-references in RoboHelp output)
• Style names that will trigger topic breaks in RoboHelp
• FrameMaker styles to ignore when the styles are imported into RoboHelp
• A default RoboHelp style to be applied to unmapped FrameMaker styles

Now, I’ll take you through some of these features in detail.

In the Style Conversion Settings section of the Settings dialog, there is an option to Convert AutoNumber to HTML list. This is generally preferred if the FrameMaker document does not include complex numbering (e.g., multilevel section numbering).

If you want to use a user defined HTML Tag for the paragraph styles, you can specify the tag e.g. ‘Pre’ tag. You can even choose the styles where this tag should be applied.

For applying properties, Click Select to open the FrameMaker Styles Conversion Properties dialog. Select the styles where these properties should be applied. Click OK to close the FrameMaker Styles Conversion Properties dialog and to return to the Style Settings dialog.

In the Style Mappings section of the Style Settings dialog, click Edit. The FrameMaker - RoboHelp Style Mappings dialog opens. In this dialog you can map each FrameMaker paragraph, cross reference, and character style to a RoboHelp style.

Select the type of style you want to map from the Style Mapping Type list. By default, the paragraph styles are selected. The individual paragraph styles found in the FrameMaker document and the RoboHelp project are displayed as shown in the screen-shot below. The FrameMaker styles are listed in the left column; the RoboHelp styles are listed in the right column. By default, each RoboHelp style is set to [source], which indicates that the FrameMaker style has not been mapped to a RoboHelp style. Preview of these styles is available in the bottom part of the dialog.

You may want to use different cross-reference styles in print form and Help deliverables. For example, page numbers are useful in PDF documents, but have no meaning in Online Help. You can map FrameMaker cross-reference formats to RoboHelp Cross Reference styles with appropriate definitions for online delivery.

For the screen-shot shown below, you may want to change the ‘Heading & Page’ cross-reference to paragraph text. Click Heading & Page to select the cross-reference style. The current definition includes a page number. Double-click <$paratext> to adjust the cross-reference format to specify only the title of the target topic.

I will touch other aspects in my next post. You can reach me at mahesh@adobe.com

Mahesh

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 9:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

FrameMaker,RoboHelp,Technical Communication,DITA,Suite,Help Authoring Tool

Adobe Technical Communication Suite comprises of Adobe FrameMaker 8, Adobe RoboHelp 7, Adobe Captivate 3 and Adobe Acrobat 3D ver 8. FrameMaker 8 extends the structured authoring functionality of FrameMaker to enable authors to work efficiently with DITA. With Captivate and Acrobat 3D, you can add Flash demo files and 3D models in FrameMaker 8. On the output side, FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map to generate PDF and online help. Once you have created a FrameMaker Book, RoboHelp provides an ability to add them as live links, that is, any update to the Book will get reflected in Help output with just two clicks (Update and Publish). With RoboHelp 7, you can generate any of the output formats like CHM, WebHelp, FlashHelp, JavaHelp or OracleHelp. 

DITA is now core part of our product strategy. As customers adopt DITA and standards evolve, I envision enhanced support for DITA across Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

DITA Support in FrameMaker 8 - The DITA functionality of FrameMaker 8 is provided by a set of application features combined with a set of structure applications, which together provide core tools for DITA authoring and publishing. The DITA functionality of FrameMaker 8 can be extended for a variety of uses.

FrameMaker offers a range of features for DITA support:

• Import/Export processing: Includes the use of some FrameMaker-specific constructs and elements (notable by their fm prefix), which are present while authoring in FrameMaker but translated to DITA-conformant XML during the import/export process. This ensures interoperability with other systems.
• DITA map support: FrameMaker offers a structure application for creating and editing DITA maps, as well as managing relationship tables. Double-clicking on a topic within a map opens that topic for editing.
• Conref support: When you open a file, FrameMaker resolves conrefs, and displays the referenced content as a text inset in the open document. FrameMaker also features the Reference Manager dialog box for inserting conrefs.
• Xref support: When you open a file, FrameMaker automatically resolves <xref> elements and displays any associated text within FrameMaker. You can turn this feature on or off.
• Output support: For generating Adobe PDF content, FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map. As the XML authored in FrameMaker conforms to the DITA standard for structure, you can also publish using other DITA tools, such as the DITA Open Toolkit. You can also download the Adobe FrameMaker 8 plug-in for DITA Open Toolkit from FrameMaker Development Center.
• Publishing to HTML using RoboHelp: FrameMaker lets you build a FrameMaker book from a DITA map.  RoboHelp as part of Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides an ability to add FrameMaker Books as live links. With RoboHelp, you can add breadcrumbs, browse sequences, Index, TOC, Glossary, Dynamic HTML effects to help output and also map FrameMaker styles to RoboHelp styles, generate context sensitive help mapping files and aggregate content from other applications like Word, DreamWeaver.

You can customize the DITA features of FrameMaker using the DITA Options dialog box or by editing the ditafm.ini file.

Posted by at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

RoboHelp,Captivate,Acrobat,3D,FrameMaker,HAT,Help Authoring Tool,Technical Communication,Suite

Adobe Technical Communication Suite provides an attractive opportunity to upgrade for existing customers of FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Captivate.  You can upgrade from any previous version of these products at a special discount. As a general rule of thumb, if you are currently using or plan to use more than one of the four products, you may find upgrade an attractive option.

Most FrameMaker users also use Adobe Acrobat software. By upgrading to Adobe Technical Communication Suite you get all the new features of FrameMaker 8 — including Unicode, DITA, 3D support, and enhanced conditional text handling—plus all features of Acrobat 3D Version 8. In addition, you get various enhancements that are unique to FrameMaker 8 for Adobe Technical Communication Suite, such as improved integration with Adobe RoboHelp 7, Adobe Captivate 3, and RoboScreen Capture. You can use the complete help authoring and publishing features of RoboHelp 7 to create help systems and knowledge bases. Adobe Captivate 3 enables the production of product simulations and demonstrations in the Adobe Flash® format by combining a realtime screen capture technology with a powerful editing environment for creating professional, interactive tutorials (complete with scenario branching and quizzes), without programming knowledge or multimedia skills. Based on the industryleading Adobe Flash platform, Adobe Captivate 3 automatically generates interactive, Adobe Flash Player compatible content that can be easily inserted into your FrameMaker and RoboHelp projects, Adobe PDF documents, or distributed via e-mail or the Web.

Engineering design and manufacturing professionals benefit from the latest version of Acrobat 3D along with the ability to export to standard 3D formats. With this suite, you will also be able to incorporate 3D models directly into FrameMaker 8, enabling you to produce rich technical PDF documents with live 3D models. In addition, you will be able to leverage the strengths and benefits of RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Captivate 3 to help meet your other technical communication needs, including the creation of help and support systems, product demonstrations, and simulations.

As a RoboHelp user, you get all the new features of RoboHelp 7 (including Unicode support, breadcrumb navigation support, a new user interface, and enhanced support for single-sourcing) plus enhancements that are only available in RoboHelp 7 for Adobe Technical Communication Suite, such as the ability to work with FrameMaker source files by adding them as links in RoboHelp projects. This provides a high level of control over online output by enabling you to define output settings and style mappings. You can embed engaging Adobe Captivate  demonstrations in RoboHelp projects, and select from a range of output formats, including WebHelp Pro and Adobe FlashHelp® Pro.

Posted by at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Adobe,RoboHelp,RoboHelp Server,HAT,Technical Communication Suite

I am slightly late in sharing this important piece of information with you all - trial builds of Adobe RoboHelp 7, Adobe RoboHelp Server 7 and Technical Communication Suite are now available on the Adobe.com. The specific URL's are:

There are some significant changes that we have done to the Trial version of Adobe RoboHelp. There is no restriction on the number of topics, no scrambling of text in the output. Trial version is a fully functional time bound (30 days validity) build. If you like the Trial and decide to buy the RoboHelp licence, all you need to do is, buy one online and enter the same on the startup screen. You do not need to uninstall the trial build or install anything extra.

There is one important point that you should be aware of - Adobe RoboHelp 7 is supported on Windows 2000, however the Trial is not. So, if you install the Trial version on Windows 2000, it will ask you for a serial number and will not let you run the product in Trial mode.The Trial version is supported only on Windows XP and Vista.

If you have any questions about Platforms supported or other System Requirements, please visit the specific product pages for detailed information on the same.

In case you find some difficultly in installing and/or working with the Trial build, you can refer to the knowledge base articles and Adobe RoboHelp forum. I encourage you to share the feedback about the product. You can reach me at amadan@adobe.com

- Akshay

Posted by Akshay Madan at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

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 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 at 9:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

Posted by Mahesh Kumar Gupta at 6:56 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 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 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 at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

This week we announced a new product Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe RoboHelp 7.  This takes the total number of technical communication related product releases in 2007 to 6 (RoboHelp 6, Acrobat 3D ver 8, FrameMaker 8, Captivate 3, Adobe Technical Communication Suite, RoboHelp 7).  You can imagine the excitement in our team.

Overall, initial feedback has been very positive. At the same time, there have been a few questions and I take this opportunity to answer some of them.

• Can I play Flash files in the Adobe Reader?
• FrameMaker can now include Captivate demos and publish them as part of PDF.  When you click a Captivate demo in PDF, the Flash file plays inside the Adobe Reader.

• How is Acrobat 3D different from Acrobat Professional?
• Acrobat 3D is a super set of Acrobat Professional with additional 3D features and 3D toolkit.  Acrobat 3D is available as a separate product and you can buy it from (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat 3d)

• How do I generate demos in Captivate?
• Captivate enables creation of professional demos and simulations in a very simple and easy way.  During the recording process, Captivate captures a sequence of actions in a software application as a set of slides and mouse movements.  It also records text entries and automatically generates text captions (for example, “Click on Open”).  You need to try Captivate to realize how easy it is to create professional demos. FYI, in STC Conference at Minneapolis, we exhausted our set of Captivate trial CDs in a couple of hours. Anyone who learned about Captivate, wanted to try it.  Now, both FrameMaker and RoboHelp can integrate Captivate demos and publish to PDF and help output respectively.  Also, RoboHelp can import Flash files from FrameMaker.

• How do I prepare 3D models for import into FrameMaker?
• Acrobat 3D includes a 3D Toolkit and this should be used to prepare 3D assets for use in FrameMaker. You can now include the actual 3D model in FrameMaker, a significant step forward from working with 2D renditions of these models.

• Do I need to convert FrameMaker documents to .MIF for importing in RoboHelp?
• No. RoboHelp 7 can import .book, .mif and .fm files.  In Adobe Technical Communication Suite, you can add FrameMaker files (.book, .fm and .mif) as live links to RoboHelp.  

Do let me know your comments and suggestions.

Posted by at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

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

With FrameMaker 8, we began our journey towards closer integration among Adobe products for technical communicators.  With four products, FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate and Acrobat 3D, catering to the needs of technical communicators, we have best in class products for each requirement.  Now with much closer integration among these products, we are enabling new workflows. 

FrameMaker 8 has two novel features - (a) insert a SWF file and (b) insert a 3D file.  Using Captivate, you can create a software simulation and generate a Flash (SWF) output.  With FrameMaker 8, you can now embed the SWF file in a document and when you save as PDF, the PDF generated contains the Flash demo.  The end users can now play the Flash demo by double-clicking the SWF file in the PDF.  We recognize that FrameMaker document also gets printed and the author needs an image (instead of the SWF) to print the document. There are two options there. One, before you publish a Flash demo from Captivate, select a pre-loader image.  This pre-loader image is visible in FrameMaker and when you take a print of the document, this image will be printed as part of the document.  Second option is to use conditional text to specify an image for print purposes.

Update - To ensure that Captivate includes the Playback Control in the published SWF, de-select the borders option in Captivate before you publish. Go to menu Project -> Skin, select the tab Borders and de-select the Show Borders check box. If you use this option, then the SWF will show the playback controls in the generated PDF. If you click on the SWF in the Adobe Reader, you can scroll, play, pause and stop the playback.

Use of 3D files in documentation opens up a new paradigm in technical communication.  You no longer need long descriptions of the 3D models, designs or diagrams in the document.  A short description with the 3D file in the document should now suffice. In addition, this substantially improves the user experience. With FrameMaker 8, you can now embed a U3D file (with Acrobat 3D, you can convert a large number of CAD formats into U3D format) and when you save as PDF, the PDF generated contains the 3D file.  The end users can now double click on the 3D file in the PDF and can rotate, enlarge and view the 3D object in different ways.  From printing perspective, there is a feature in Acrobat 3D to define default views for the 3D object.  In FrameMaker, you can select one of the default views and the printed documented will have that default image.

During the Sneak Peek of RoboHelp at the STC Conference in Minneapolis, we also demonstrated closer integration between RoboHelp (currently under development) and FrameMaker. Cross product integration is a long journey and with FrameMaker 8, we have moved significantly forward. For sure, we have many more milestones to cross.

Please do share your comments and suggestions.

Posted by at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Technical Communication,FrameMaker 8,RoboHelp 7,Technical Communication Suite

Adobe FrameMaker 8 is available now. 

The year 2007 is turning out be an exciting one for Adobe in technical communication. We already had four product releases - Adobe RoboHelp 6, Adobe Acrobat 3D ver 8, Adobe FrameMaker 8 and Adobe Captivate 3, and we have another 5 months to go before we end this year. 

FrameMaker 8 is probably one of the most significant releases in the history of FrameMaker.  With Unicode, DITA, support for Flash, 3D, conditional text enhancements, Filter by Attribute, Track text edits and so on, FrameMaker 8 is a feature packed release.  This time, we had a very active pre-release program and that has greatly helped in improving the product.  Also, the development team led by Rajat Bansal has demonstrated exemplary commitment in making this release possible.  We have certainly achieved more than what we initially set out to do.

With the release of FrameMaker 8, we are entering a period of accelerated development for FrameMaker.  We have started planning for the next version and if you have a feature enhancement request, do let us know.

Update - We recently announced Adobe Technical Communication Suite and Adobe RoboHelp 7.

Posted by at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Technical Communication,Acrobat 3D,FrameMaker,CAD,3D Models,U3D

Acrobat 3D Version 8 is available now. Over the past few months, more than 10,000 users participated in the beta and public preview programs for Acrobat 3D Version 8.

With Acrobat 3D Version 8, CAD, CAM, CAE, and technical publishing professionals in the aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, heavy machinery, life sciences, and AEC industries can convert virtually any 3D CAD file -- including large assemblies of more than 500 megabytes -- into a single PDF document. The PDF file can maintain precise geometry or be compressed several times smaller than the original file.

One of the wow features, we demonstrated in the Technology Sneak Peek of FrameMaker at the STC Conference in Minneapolis, was support for including 3D models in FrameMaker. Once 3D models are combined with other documents in PDF, Acrobat 3D Version 8 users can enable extended teams of colleagues, suppliers, partners, and customers to participate in an efficient document review process leveraging the free, ubiquitous Adobe Reader® software. Adobe Reader users can view detailed product structure and, when enabled by Acrobat 3D Version 8, have the ability to use commenting, measurement and cross-section tools directly on 3D objects in PDF files.

Acrobat 3D Version 8 supports conversion to 3D PDF from over 40 formats, including those for Autodesk Inventor, Dassault Systemes CATIA, PTC Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, and UGS NX and I-deas (see full list at www.adobe.com/go/a3d_supportedformats).

Comments switched off because of frequent spam. Please add your comments to another post. My apologies for inconvenience.

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Technical Communication,HAT,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Migrating from Flare,Transition,Upgrade,Suite,Help Authoring,Knowledge Base,Policies and Procedures.

One of the most interesting requests from customers at the STC Conference Minneapolis was for a migration path from Flare to RoboHelp.  Clearly, some of the customers, who had migrated from RoboHelp to Flare, want to come back to RoboHelp. We understand that they are attracted by the quality of Adobe products and the direction in which RoboHelp is moving. Any doubts they had were set to rest with the sneak peek of the features under development for RoboHelp.  Customers also recognize an accelerated pace of innovation from Adobe in technical communication with three products (FrameMaker, Captivate and Acrobat 3D) in different stages of the pre-release program.

We continue to evaluate the business case for offering migration utilities to Flare customers. If you are considering a migration from Flare to RoboHelp, please let us know. Your inputs are valuable.

Update - John Daigle (www.hypertexas.com, www.showmethedemo.com) has posted a free Flare to RoboHelp converter. The converter is a free download from John Daigle's site and source code is also available under Common Public License.

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Technical,Communication,RoboHelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D,Sneak Peek,new release

STC 54th Annual Conference in Minneapolis was a great success. From Adobe perspective, we had a strong presence with eight sessions on FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Captivate.  Each of the sessions included technology sneak peeks for the corresponding Adobe product.  The feedback from the sneak peeks has been very positive. We also had a constant stream of visitors coming over at the Adobe booth seeking more information about these products. More importantly, we had an opportunity to meet a large number of customers, experts and partners.  We also had several 1:1 customer meetings to understand their requirements and collect feedback on our products.

You have most probably seen the discussion on forums and blogs on the sneak peeks. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do let me know.

Posted by at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Technical,communication,Adobe,E-seminar,robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

Recording of the Adobe on-demand seminars is available online. Please use the go url to access them :http://www.adobe.com/go/techcom_eseminars

Current ondemand seminars recorded from a past live sessions include:

1) What's new in Adobe RoboHelp 6?
2) Intro to Adobe RoboHelp Server 6 and Adobe FlashHelp Pro
3) Benefits of Structured Authoring and Migrating in Preparation for XML
4) FrameMaker and DITA
5) Have You Looked At FrameMaker Lately?
6) Adobe FrameMaker 7.2: Writing for Global Audiences
7) Increase ROI when migrating from Word to Adobe FrameMaker

Also, a live eseminar "Adobe RoboSource Control" is planned for broadcast in May.

Posted by at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Technical,communication,Adobe,E-seminar,robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

Adobe Product Management team for technical communication will be attending the STC Conference at Minneapolis. We will like to take this opportunity to meet our customers and partners. If you are available for a meeting, please leave a comment and we will contact you.

If you are planning to attend the Conference, you now have added incentive. We will be providing technology sneak peeks of the features of the next versions of FrameMaker, RoboHelp and Captivate. Please plan to attend the following sessions for a chance to catch the technology sneak peeks.

Monday May 14
Tips and Tricks for Adobe® RoboHelp® Users 11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Developing Non-Software-Based eLearning with Adobe Captivate® 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Making sense of the FrameMaker and XML Alphabet Soup 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Adobe RoboHelp 6 goes to the movies with Adobe Captivate animations 3:30 pm to 5:00 pm

Tuesday May 15
Adobe FrameMaker® Advanced Template Features 8:30 am – 10:00 am
Adobe FrameMaker: Migrating from Unstructured to Structured Content 10:30 am to 12:00 pm
Adobe RoboHelp Server 6 for user feedback and Adobe RoboSource Control 3 for team authoring 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
Increase ROI when migrating from Word to Adobe FrameMaker 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm

See you at STC Minneapolis.

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We thank our user community for their continued support.  We had a great time at WritersUA seeing familiar faces and making new friends.  We have so much to share with all of you in the coming year!  Below is the list of our prize winners at the WritersUA.  They will be contacted shortly to receive their prizes.

Adobe RoboHelp 6 - Linda Schoenhoff, Melissa G. Steiner, Rebecca Stevenson

Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 - Roger A. Sharp, Patricia F. Olsen, Diane S. Marcus

Adobe Captivate 2- Cheryl Blackford, Stephanie R. Marshall, Arlyn Lee

Thanks,

Vivek Jain

Posted by at 5:57 PM | Permalink

Technical,communication,Adobe,Windows Vista,robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

There have been some questions on Windows Vista support. Adobe FrameMaker 7.2 and Adobe RoboHelp 6 do not support Windows Vista. However, the next versions currently under development for both FrameMaker and RoboHelp will support Windows Vista.

Update - Adobe FrameMaker 8, Adobe RoboHelp 7 and Adobe Technical Communication Suite support Windows Vista and Office 2007. If you are publishing online help or HTML help and looking at a cross platform solution, you can download RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR . RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR generates cross-platform online help and provides two additional skins - Multi Tab Accordion and Unipane .

Posted by at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Technical,communication,Adobe,Review,Commenting,robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

Technical communicators receive content from several contributors, for example, from design, engineering, marketing and support teams. Once the content has been gathered, organized and laid out in the output formats, it needs to be reviewed by the contributors for accuracy and completeness.  Sending source project files and long documents with conditional text and variables for review is probably not the best option.  Here, PDF creation capability in authoring tools and review and commenting functionality in Acrobat becomes really useful.

During our discussion at the Writer's UA conference, many customers appreciated this functionality. PDF retains the visual appearance of the content as well as de-links the review and commenting workflow from the project source files. In a PDF document, a content contributor can highlight text, mark deleted text, insert new text, add sticky notes, reply to comments from other reviewers and send these back to the initiator of the review. You can also attach an audio file as a comment to PDF document.

With Acrobat 8 Professional or Acrobat 3D version 8, you can conduct shared reviews. Anyone with Adobe Reader 8 can participate. When you send a document for shared review, all reviewers can see and reply to each other's comments as they are made. For shared review, the PDF document needs to be on a shared network with read/write access to all reviewers. It takes less than a minute to set up the shared network folder, specify a deadline for the review to complete and send e-mails to participants.

Both FrameMaker and RoboHelp can create PDF.  If you haven't tried this review functionality in Acrobat, please do take a look. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Posted by at 4:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Acrobat 3D version 8 is a major step towards re-defining what we mean by rich content. Acrobat 3D provides an ability to include 3D objects in technical communication (Technical Communication: Rich Content - getting richer).

To quote - "With Acrobat 3D Version 8, design engineering, technical publishing and creative professionals in manufacturing industries such as automotive, aerospace and heavy machinery, as well as the AEC market, can convert virtually any 3D CAD file and other critical project data into a highly compressed PDF document with precise geometry." The most interesting part is that the same PDF file can then be shared with colleagues, suppliers, partners, and customers for more collaboration.  At the same time, PDF provides an ability to do this securely.

The preview can be downloaded at labs.adobe.com/technologies/acrobat3d_version8/.

Comments switched off because of frequent spam. Please add your comments to another post. My apologies for inconvenience.

Posted by at 11:17 PM | Permalink

Technical,communication,Adobe,Quality,Innovation,Robohelp,FrameMaker,Captivate,Acrobat 3D

Often in pursuit of new features, quality takes a hit.  Quality is obviously the most important part of any software application. A feature delivers customer value only when it is stable and can be used consistently.  I believe there are a few aspects of quality we need to pay close attention to in the context of HATs.

1. Value to the customer – A new feature must deliver incremental value to the customer.  For example, at present, RoboHelp can export to FrameMaker today in two steps, (a) export the project to RTF, and (b) import the RTF into FrameMaker.  For a new feature, “export to FrameMaker” to add value, it should be significantly better than this existing option.

2. Availability to all end-users – A feature should depend on only those third party products which are widely available. This is one of the main reasons why RoboHelp exports to Microsoft Word for creating PDF and not FrameMaker.

Update- Adobe RoboHelp 6 uses Acrobat Elements to create Adobe PDF. You can do that directly from RoboHelp. Word is only an intermediate step in PDF generation.

3. Ease of use – If a new feature is hard to use, the value of the feature is limited.

4. Promised vs. available set of features – There is an increasing trend of promising features in the later versions. This makes the comparison of HATs an exercise in futility. Also,a customer can use only what exists today, not what will come 12 months later.

I believe it is time to return to fundamental principle of software delivery- Quality.

Posted by at 1:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Technical,communication,Adobe,Single sourcing,Robohelp

In Adobe RoboHelp 6, we added a number of features for Single Sourcing. Here are a few more examples -

1. Apply Conditional tags on Table rows and columns - With improved support for conditional tags, you can now apply them on table rows and columns. And the usage is very simple, in a table, select a row or a column, right-click and apply a conditional tag.  Here is an example -

2. Hyperlinks in Word and PDF export -Hyperlinks in Word and PDF export are retained as hyperlinks.

3. User defined variables - Now, you can define variables. After you insert them at the right location, you can change the value later, providing greater flexibility and control.

Besides single sourcing, we made several enhancements in Adobe RoboHelp 6. This includes command line compile. corrected - Enabling index terms to link to bookmarks inside a topic and not just a topic, already existed prior to RoboHelp 6 . This gives you better control if a particular topic spans across multiple pages and still retains the ease of use.

We continue to look for more suggestions on how to improve these capabilities in RoboHelp further.

Posted by at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Technical communication is moving from static documents to richer content. A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words. In the online world, it is not just limited to pictures, end users of technical documents want more - tutorials, videos, 3D objects and so on. A number of technical communicators already use Captivate, Photoshop, Acrobat 3D and related products. We recognize this need and trend.

FrameMaker enables import of graphic files by reference and enables you to resize, crop, change orientation, rotate and flip the images. With Acrobat 3D, manufacturers can incorporate 3D designs into technical communication (see sample embedded 3D file in PDF). You can manipulate a 3D object (for example, rotation, taking different views, lighting, etc.) in Acrobat 3D, capture or export an image and include that in FrameMaker and RoboHelp. After you create a PDF, you can replace the picture with the actual 3D object in Acrobat 3D and change the orientation, background color, highlight specific areas of the 3D model and so on.

Adobe RoboHelp 6 allows you to insert Adobe Captivate demo (simulations, software demonstrations, and scenario-based training) from a topic within RoboHelp HTML and RoboHelp for Word. In addition, RoboScreenCapture (ships with Adobe RoboHelp 6) enables you to capture screens in 10 different modes, including Free Hand, Virtual Screen, and Multi-region. You can edit screen captures (add image stamps, frames, and drop shadows; add shadow and shape effects; change image colors; flip, rotate, crop, resize images) and export images to common file formats. This also enables adding identifying stamps, such as company name or logo, to each screen capture. After you have edited, you can save images in different formats.

Please let me know your views on the role rich content plays in technical communication and how will you like FrameMaker and RoboHelp to support you in this endeavor.

On a separate note, Aseem, Product Manager, FrameMaker joined me on the Technical Communication blog. I hope to have more colleagues join us as we go forward.

Note - Since I am unable to visit every external link and validate it, please don't post comments with external HTML links.

Posted by at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Technical,communication,Adobe,Single sourcing,Robohelp 6,Source Control,Content Management,Team Authoring

Team authoring is an important requirement for technical communication. Technical communicators are often working in teams and need to collaborate on projects. There are of course several means of collaborating, for example, through e-mails, shared folders, source control repositories and content management systems. 

Each of these collaboration methods have their positives and limitations. E-mail is convenient and available for everyone. While ad-hoc nature of e-mail is a positive, it can also become a problem when you have tight deadlines. Since there is no shared collection of all the project files, there is no way of tracking the team activity and ensuring everyone has a same view of the project at all points in time.

Shared folders are easy to use, can use access control built into the operating system and work well in LAN environment. However, you must work on the network all the time. For example, if you are editing a file and don't want anyone else to change it till you have finished, you cannot work on a local copy. If you create a local copy and work on that, you lose the benefit of shared folders. Also, if two authors simultaneously edit a particular file, there is no way of merging the files.

Source control repositories enable all the benefits of file sharing, with an ability to work on a local copy of the file, while the file remains "checked-out" from the repository. Source Control systems also allow the ability for multiple authors to simultaneously work on a particular file and merge back the changes made in each version. Version management, access over a network (outside the LAN), access control, file sharing etc are features which are normally available as part of source control systems. In case of RoboHelp, RoboSourceControl is integrated inside the application, which makes the workflow seamless. RoboSourceControl also has advanced version management capabilities, for example, comparing different versions – view changes, merging two versions of same file, labeling different versions and rolling back to previous version. Installation of source control system is relatively easy (it took me about 15 minutes to install, configure and run RoboSourceControl).

Content management systems add advanced workflow management capabilities, searching the repository for related content, and have a mechanism to alert team members about the status of the project. Even though, RoboSourceControl also has e-mail alert capability, this feature is usually not part of source control systems. Content management systems are usually installed and maintained by IS systems and may require consulting support for installation and training. Often, companies opt for an enterprise wide installation of a content management system.

It would be useful to know your views on the best way of collaboration and what is that you are most comfortable with.

Posted by at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My plan is blog on things related to FrameMaker, RoboHelp and technical communication in general. I intend to be brief in my posts and hopefully, pertinent to the goal of this blog. Not sure how frequently I will get to post.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a blog for some time. When we released RoboHelp 6.0 last week and blogs started buzzing with excitement, it seemed the right time to make a start.

So, let's begin.

Posted by at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)