Hi Avi
I must be a horribly dumb and unintelligent person. Here's
why I say that.
I have never found the RoboHelp WYSIWYG editor to limit me.
Sure, for a number of years there was that inserted KADOV code that
seemed to drive folks crazy. But it never bothered me. I just
accepted it as being part of what RoboHelp allowed me to do and it
never seemed to cause me issues.
So, for some answers to your questions...
You asked if projects worked better when edited locally.
Indeed they still do. Keep your projects on a local C drive and you
won't have the issues that would be induced by working off a
network resource. And I might add that at a few points in RoboHelp
and Captivate classes, I've heard others comment about other
applications they have encountered that are somewhat finicky in
that regard. So don't think it's an issue that is limited to Adobe
products.
You are correct in that there is no "Save as" option. The
manner you described is the way to work. However, keeping in mind
what I stated earlier, I would point this out. In almost every
other application that supports Save As, how does it behave? I know
with Word, if I click Save As and use a different location and file
name, I'm automatically disconnecting from what I was working on
and am suddenly making edits to the document I saved as in the new
location. So this could really shoot you in the foot if you were
able to Save As to a network share, no?
Indeed you create your Tables of Contents in a different pod
of the editor. But you are still working within the RoboHelp
interface. From what you wrote, it would seem that you somehow want
that to be different? I'm lost with what you are looking for here.
When you choose to edit a TOC, you are editing a different file
containing all the code connecting the TOC nodes to the relevant
topics.
Again, I'm stumped with what you feel is missing with the
WYSIWYG editor. You say there are features missing. Please clue us
in on how you wish it were different. I've used it just fine for
years. To me, there is nothing missing except perhaps better/easier
table formatting.
Sure, anyone can open Notepad and edit HTML directly. But who
would really want to work that way? Geez, there are so many nice
features that help you out using the editor that is provided. I'd
be willing to bet a dollar against a donut (wait, at today's rates
I may need to bet a 20
) that these "Experts" most likely resort to Notepad
only to tweak things here and there. I cannot fathom a true Expert
choosing the long way around. To me, this would be like saying
"Nope, I'm not going to take the jet from New York to England. I
have this canoe right here and I'm an expert at paddling". I would
hope an expert would recognize the strengths and weaknesses of all
the different tools at their disposal and choose wisely.
Just a few random thoughts from the edge... Rick