I think you're right on, Lin. You know the tools you need to produce your deliverables. I don't tell my plumber what kind of wrench to use...
john -----Original Message----- From: framers-bounces+jsgammato=imprivata....@lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces+jsgammato=imprivata.com at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Lin Surasky Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 2:10 PM To: framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: FM v. RoboHelp No, it's not a typo. No, we're not being asked to use Word.... The person in charge of "quality" for our company does not seem to understand why we don't use RoboHelp to create content for our software manuals. After all, every office has RoboHelp (not the Adobe version), so what's the big deal? To me, the big deal is that we deliver PDFs, not CHMs, to our customers, and they like the layout. And it's faster to work in FM than it is in RH. My rule is, if I have to provide a TOC, it's a book. If I'm providing a book, I'm working in FM. If they decide they ALSO want HTML or CHM files, I can do that too, with FrameMaker and MIF2Go. I can't create a CHM in RH and then effortlessly have a pretty PDF to give our other customers, or can I? For the record, we are not currently delivering ANY online help. We deliver User Guides, Admin Guides, Release Notes, and whitepapers/reports. All are electronic -- no printing except for the pages our users want to print for themselves. Am I wrong to stick so stubbornly to my FM process? FM Process: Source content created and maintained in FM book. For delivery, PDFs are generated with live x-refs/links where necessary using Acrobat. If users want or need HTML, MIF2Go is ready to -- er, go. (No one in the US has EVER asked for a CHM, but if it should happen, use HTML Help Workshop to compile the HTML Help from MIF2Go.) RH Process: Source content created and maintained in RH. For delivery, PDFs are generated and look awful because there's no clean page layout formatting OR CHMs are delivered. Does it even make sense to deliver CHM for browser-based software being accessed over a network, since CHMs need to be accessed from the hard drive (unless you get into registry edits, which is NOT an option for us.) (We're also not doing much file-swapping amongst writers; we all kind of do our own thing, and there's not much room for content reuse right now, but still they want everyone to follow the same process...) Ideas? Feedback? I promised I would get opinions from the experts over here, as I apparently don't qualify as one myself... So what would you do, wise ones? Lin _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as jsgammato at imprivata.com. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/jsgammato%40imprivat a.com Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
