Hey, folks. Following up on Rick and Colum, let's see if I
can break this down a bit.
This thread is one good reason that Adobe decided to end the
multiple product madness of the old eHelp/Macromedia days.
We had umpteen different products and no one knew exactly
what did what.
Now, there are only two products.
One - Adobe RoboHelp 6 - is what the author uses to create
and publish the various layout outputs. The typical output is
WebHelp or FlashHelp and can reside on just about any web server
out there (Windows IIS, UNIX, Linux, Apache, etc.) For many, that's
all you need. Case closed.
Two - Adobe RoboHelp Server 6 (and the old RoboEngine) is an
*option* for those who would like the extra features described in
my post above. It's great for Intranets where you have a lot of
forms,etc. Here, the typical output is WebHelp Pro or FlashHelp
Pro. These "Pro" outputs are only appropriate for publishing to an
Adobe RoboHelp Server.
As for the artist formerly known as RoboHelp for .NET, eHelp
created this as a set of APIs created for .NET developers who
wanted to use C# (C-sharp) language in coding their apps. The API
is a set of ready-made functions that developers can use to create
context-sensitive help calls or something called "web services" to
better integrate the help with the app. That said, these APIs are
not required by .NET. They are simply convenient code snippets the
developer can use if they find them helpful. Some developers use
them and some developers choose to "roll their own".
The good news is that RoboHelp for .NET (the APIs which used
to cost nearly a thousand bucks) is now free and included with
Adobe RoboHelp 6 (even if you don't buy the RoboHelp Server). In
fact you can see them with example code here where they are
installed in this path:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\RoboHelp 6.0\CSH API\RoboHelp.NET
Anyone who works with developers in a .NET environment will
want to share this folder of APIs (and examples) to let them know
what is available. Again, they may say "thanks but we'll make our
own" or they may say, "Wow, we didn't know this was available,
thanks!"
.
john
John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor
Newport, Oregon