Converting from RoboHelp to FrameMaker

Hi Kelly

The thing is, most often folks are either Frame centric or RoboHelp  centric. Seldom do we see folks taking RoboHelp and moving that to  Frame.

As I understand it, if you are Frame centric, that is the approach you would take. Adobe's recommended workflow seems to be as follows:

Start with Frame. Make all edits using Frame. From Frame you create your PDF output if you like. You link Frame to RoboHelp to create help type outputs.

Of course if you are RoboHelp centric, you ignore Frame is even there and only work with RoboHelp.

Cheers... Rick

That method's probably a sure way to heartache in FM (Word imports a lot of crap into FM). I'd suggest going from RH to Word then PDF and then pull the PDF into FM. Check the frameusers.com mailing list for RH to FM suggestions (do a Google search on site:frameusers.com).

Sorry, no idea - I've never had to bring a PDF into a FM doc. I just know that it can be done (with what results - I have no idea). You may end up just copying & pasting as text into your FM doc and applying styles afterwards.

Kelly,

FM treats PDFs as graphics (i.e. it converts a PDF page internally to EPS format). So, unfortunately, you have to import each page one at a time and place it as a graphics object. If there's a lot of content, you may simply be better off merging at the PDF level.

However, importing Word content isn't as dire nor painful as some have mentioned, depending upon how well constructed the Word document is. If styles have been applied consistently, then it might be worth a shot. If the document is all tagged as Normal and the visual appearance is all due to formatting overrides from the toolbars/ribbons then it might be a really frustrating exercise. Importing as plain text and re-tagging is always another option.

Hi Arnis

Soooo, as RoboHelp should be creating a well formatted Word document, things should work out pretty well, no?

Cheers... Rick

Kelly,

If everything has been tagged consistently, the conversion should be relatively painless and quick. No need to procrastinate.

Select a representative Robo-generated Word doc (i.e. one that has most style used) and then use FM to Open (don't import) the Word file. It will create a document with all of the styles defined in the Word document only. Use this is document as your base template and tweak the styles as required for your page layouts in FM. Then after you open in FM other generated Word documents, import the base template into these to ensure a consistent layout. Keep in mind that importing FM style formatting is additive, i.e. exactly named styles are replaced and differently named ones are added. It's important to maintain your base template file.

Hi Rick,

If Robo generates clean Word contentt, then there shouldn't be much of a problem. The key is consistency in naming of the paragraph and characer level styles/tags.

I'm coming in late but the root problem here is Kelly wants good printed documents because too much work is required if the output goes to Word. Whatever the deficiencies of Word for Kelly, surely she is going to have to deal with them in Word or FM as the first stage in the proposed workflow is going to be generating to Word?

Maybe if Kelly could tell us what the deficiencies are, there could be a way of generating what she wants direct into Word or with minimal tidy up.

The Printed Documentation pages on my site have not yet been updated for RoboHelp 9 but the changes are minimal and most all of the content is still valid.

See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

Kelly, I recommend

1. Using the Printed Documentation to Word to produce a Word file (see Peter's site at www.grainge.org/ for best practices)
2. Open the Word file into FrameMaker to create a base document for your FM template. This file will contain your base paragraph and other catalogs.
3. Create your template file by modifying the definitions (If you'll be importing more than one document, DO NOT change the names of the formats. If desired, contact Rick Quattro for an inexpensive conversion of tag names via FrameScript)
4. Import (File > Import > File, not File > Open) any other word files into this template.

-Matt

I have a similar problem.  I need to import my RoboHelp 7 content into FrameMaker 10.  Our other tech writers are using FrameMaker 9 to create and edit DITA content.   (They don't have RoboHelp.)  They are using the DITA Open Toolkit to produce output (PDFs and WebHelp).  Is using Microsoft Word (I have 2007) the best way to import my RoboHelp files into FrameMaker (other than copy/paste)?  I need to get my RoboHelp files into DITA XML format (which I know must be done manually). Is Word really the only viable way to import the RoboHelp content into FrameMaker?  I know that you can link RoboHelp 9 to FrameMaker 10 in order to publish Webhelp (one of RJ Jacquez's videos showed this).  I can't use Robohelp to create and edit content anymore because it doesn't support creating and editing using DITA.  I also have context-sensitive help in my RoboHelp files and trying to figure out how to retain it if I import the RH files into FM.  All of the tech writers here would like to be able to use one tool for single sourcing, e.g., FrameMaker.  I'd like to upgrade to TCS 3 (I'm on 1) so I can use RoboHelp to generate the WebHelp from FrameMaker.  Can anyone show me the best way to get my RoboHelp content into FrameMaker?

Thanks!

Gina

Short answer is - there isn't any direct route.

Consensus in this thread is to go:

RH > Word, Word > FM

to get content from RH to FM.

Your CSH can be maintained when you go the "normal" route from FM to RH by using FM markers to tell RH how to build a MapID table.

Jeff,

Thanks very much for responding so quickly.  I'm watching RJ's videos on structured authoring on Adobe's Web site and imported some test Word docs generated from RoboHelp 7 into FrameMaker 10.

Gina

I was able to successfully import my RoboHelp project into Flare 7, then create FrameMaker output as an .fm and .book from Flare.  Now that I have these in FrameMaker, the .fm and .book files are one 400+ page file each.  How do you split the files into separate files?  I'm just learning FrameMaker, but I've been using RoboHelp for 11 years.  I've searched everywhere and can't figure this out.  My goal is to then convert these FM files to DITA XML in FM.

Thanks.

Gina

Hi Gina

I might be mistaken, but wouldn't this be a question better suited to the Madcap forums? It would seem that you need to ask the Madcap folks how to create the Frame content the way you want.

Cheers... Rick

There's no way that I know to break up a FM doc into smaller chunks other than by cutting & pasting into new docs.

Done.  I'll post the response here.  Thanks very much.