Robohelp and publishing to HTML (.htm) files

[Guest]

I need to create a software documentation project where the deliverable will consist of a loose collection of HTML (.htm) files (not a website with index.htm).

I don't see an option in Robohelp 9 that enables me to publish my project (ToC topics) to HTML files (converting a topic to an html file). I know each topic in a project is stored as an .htm file, however, i also read somewhere (in this forum i believe) that they are Robohelp project files and not exactly web ready --for example, external link paths in a topic use back slash instead of forward slash.

It seems odd that i will need to find an html editor tool because robohelp is an html editor that doesn't publish to html.  (did i just hear a salesman say, hey, this is how we cross sell products like dreamweaver).

Bottom line, is robohelp not the right tool for publishing to html files? 

[Willam_van_Weelden · Accepted solution]

Hi,

To clear a misunderstanding: RoboHelp does publish to HTML, but RoboHelp is not a dedicated HTML editor. The RoboHelp source files are indeed not ready for a website. You can generate loose HTML files from RoboHelp that may suit your need. The table of contents, index and glossary are then generated as simple XML files. (Use an XML output SSL to generate XHTML files.)

Whether RoboHelp is the right tool for you, is something only you can decide. RoboHelp is not focused on being a HTML editor. It's a HAT tool with many options focused on creating help, such as variables, snippets, review workflow, easy table of contents creation, etc. Of course you can manually edit the HTML of the topics, but RoboHelp is designed so you don't have to if you don't want that.

If you don't want any of these features, a free product like Notepad++ might be your best choice. Hope that this clarifies. Feel free to post back with any questions.

Greet,

Willam

[Guest]

William,

Thank you for your reply. I created a project consisting of 4 topics in the ToC (no books) and published to "XML Output". The ouput folder contains the loose html files along with an image folder (for the images I inserted in the topics). Each html topic opens fine in IE 8.

In addition to the HTML files, there were also XML files and a javascript file the XML output generated which i guess i can delete with no negative consequence (i do not see a reference to the javascript in the html source). Please reply if there could be an issue deleting these files.