Conversion from Robohelp 9 to Wiki format

[JDHickey]

Greetings!

I've searched online and in the forums for an answer to this question, but almost everything is dated 4 to 5 years ago. Hopefully, it's time to start talking about this again.

I've just realized that when my client asked for a web-based Online Help system, what he really meant is Wiki-based Help system. I have TechComm Suite 3.5, which means I've got Frame 10 and RoboHelp 9.

I've found a couple of references to the MediaWiki and its tool to convert RoboHelp 8 topics to wiki format, but there's nothing about RoboHelp 9. Is it still compatible? Why does RoboHelp not have Wiki as a publishing format since some of the most popular applications have moved away from the online help format and into the knowledge-based, wiki format?

So my question is: is there a way to use Frame 10 or RoboHelp 9 to create a wiki-based Help system, or does the MediaWiki tool still work with RoboHelp 9 and does anyone have any experience with it?

--

JD Hickey

Documentia Inc.

www.documentia.ca

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

There have been some discussions on this topic here and on the Framers mailing list. It’s not an output format that RH does – need to get your wishlist vote in for it. Latest discussions I’ve seen indicate that it’s an imperfect import – the xhtml that RH creates doesn’t translate well to the newest MediaWiki formats. Confluence seems to use Word as its import mechanism – much pain all round.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

If a wiki is what you want, why are you using RoboHelp?

RoboHelp doesn't "do" wiki and anything it creates will most certainly have to be converted. Once converted, RoboHelp wouldn't be able to use it again and you would have to start over.

Cheers... Rick

Helpful and Handy Links RoboHelp Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form Begin learning RoboHelp HTML 7, 8 or 9 within the day! Adobe Certified RoboHelp HTML Training SorcerStone Blog RoboHelp eBooks

[JDHickey]

Greetings!

I didn't want to do a wiki... the client said he wanted Online Help, so that's what I put together for him, But in the end, what he really meant was a wiki or a knowledge base. So I'm looking at the tools I have and seeing how I can deliver what he wants.

If you look at some of the popular apps, they all seem to have moved away from the traditional Help systems and moved towards the wiki or knowledge base type systems. Here are some examples that my client gave me:

https://support.skype.com/en

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/

http://help.opera.com/Windows/12.00/en/

If this is where the future of Help is going, then I would have thought that RoboHelp would want to offer solutions to meet those needs. I was hoping RH or Frame might have something I can use, but I'm learning that they don't, so I'm going to have to learn something new and learn it quickly.

--

JD Hickey

Documentia Inc.

www.documentia.ca

[Mark_Southee]

JD,

If you are looking at Confluence, the following Atlassian blog post may be of interest (I don't work for Atlassian btw)

http://blogs.atlassian.com/2010/11/technical_writing_wiki_single_source_publishing/

[Guest]

Hello,

in our company we use RoboHElp 9 to generate our online help. At the moment, we're working on moving some of the content to a Confluence wiki. I did some investigation on the internet to find a plug&play tool that does the convertion of RoboHelp XHTML to Confluence storage format, but I found nothing.

Actually, I tried converting from RoboHelp to MediaWiki (and from that to Confluence) using a tool mentioned by Tom Johnson in his blog, but I didn't succeed with this. Now, we'll use Word (which has lots of drawbacks, but still ...) to migrate our content.

But this is a one way street, in my opinion. After migration we'll work on the content in Confluence and never in RH again.

The purpose of moving to a wiki is to use the wiki functionality such as collaboration on topics, comments, ...

BTW, the refence links your client gave to you, don't seem to me very wiki-like. Look here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Confluence+Documentation+Home for a sample wiki documentation.