Implementing RoboHelp 8

[jthomas666]

I've been tasked with implementing the TCS2 suite for my company.  I've been using Frame for a few years, so I'm ok there, but while I get the general gist of Robohelp, it's a little daunting.  In fact, neither myself nor the other writer here has any experience with online help.  In addition, it doesn't look like my company is willing to shell out for training.  The goal is to create a process for creating online help in Robohelp that is bulletproof enough that we can feed in a translated Frame book and know that a workable set of help files will come out the other end.

Is anyone aware of a Best Practices document for using Frame and RH?  If I have some kind of structured process to work through, I can pick up enough to manage.

Thanks,

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I know that Adobe's R.J. Jacquez has a series of webinars on his blog (http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/ ) about integrating FM to RH.

[jthomas666]

I've already viewed that. It's a touch on the general side, and doesn't not have much in the way of "Best Practices". I'm trying to find something that I can print out, review, make notes on, etc.

Thanks,

Jim

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm not going to attempt a detailed guide here, but a few general hints:

• Keep file and folder structures as simple as possible and don't use more than one level of sub folders for storing topics
• Work locally off the C: drive not My documents or a network drive.
• Help systems comprise large numbers of "topic" files which are like taking a FM chapter and chopping it into bits about the level of major headings.
• To manage the large number of topic files you could use systematic file naming and/or group topics into folders.
• The Topic name should be the same as the title viewed in the topic but the file name can be different if this is needed.

Hope that's useful.

[RoboColum_n_]

In addition to what others have added, I say it was worth investing time to get your RH style sheet setup to enable you to map your FM styles. This is absolutely key to getting clean RH topics.

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Read the RoboColum(n).