Re: RoboHelp Review

[Sue Heim <SUE -at- RIS -dot- RISINC -dot- COM>]

Tim Altom wrote:
<snip>
> >I've used Wysi-Help, RoboHelp, Doc-to-Help, Help Writer's Assitant, and
> >others. All of them do precisely, exactly and totally the same thing.
> >WinHelp files are the same whether produced in these things or in Word for
> >Windows, which is what RoboHelp is REALLY doing. I just learned how to do it
> >without RoboHelp.\

This is only partially true. Yes, ultimately, you get the RTF files
in a clean format that compiles nicely into a Winhelp file. But how
they go about it is different. And other things you can do are
different. For example, D2H only allows me to create online docs
*after* I've written the manual. RH allows me to go either way.  If
this is important, then it's something to be considered (and not just
that the two are similar, cause they aren't).

I learned how to create Winhelp files, ages ago, using Microsoft's
Help Compiler and *manually* creating the files. I will *not* go back
to manually coding files ever again. The amount of time that a
utility such as D2H or RH saves is invaluable (and yes, I'm the only
writer here, and time is of the essence!), and cannot be compared
with manually creating Winhelp files. Of course, if your Winhelp
files are small, independent of an application, and don't require
context-sensitive jumps, then manually creating Winhelp files is a
obvious solution. But not if your help files contain hundreds of
topics, require context-sensitive jumps, and so on.

...sue
-------------------------
Sue Heim
Research Information Systems
Carlsbad, California USA
Email: Sue -at- ris -dot- risinc -dot- com