RH in Mac OS X Leopard environment

[HKabaker]

First a question:
Is anyone running RoboHelp (i.e., building a project) in Mac OS Leopard? If so, do you need a Windows emulator? I'm guessing success would be more likely on an Intel-based Mac than on a PPC machine.

I opened some WebHelp output packages in Leopard on an Intel MacBook. Mostly, it works pretty well. There are some differences in formatting. It doesn't look exactly like the IE display. Text sizes are different. Navigating doesn't work precisely the same as in IE.

The big news is that the Search and Index don't default to the old list style. They display, and the search form works, the same as in IE. (Reminder: Text looks different.)

Firefox and Safari perform about equally well, but each has its own quirks.

Some hiccups lin Safari loading a long Index from a large merged project. Once it's completely loaded, the list of keywords displays completely. Be patient.

In both browsers the Index type-to-find function works, and the results correctly list multiple found topics or open a single found topic. Search results work fine in both.

Firefox needs Esc to stop spinning its wheels. TOC books won't open and TOC might be inoperable, until you click Esc.

Not sure about Reload from the browser toolbar. Safari reloads the launch topic rather than the one you were viewing.

Firefox reloads the current topic, but not the associated Nav Bar. (Note: Possibly this is caused by some patches I've made in the output. If you're getting a normal reload, please post your results.)

The breadcrumbs "Home" link gets confused when you have a subproject up. In my case, Firefox loaded the home page for the parent project, but kept the subproject's TOC. The browser reload button didn't fix it.

Text display problems might be solved by tinkering with the alternative .css stylesheet, if that's what they both use. A different font might display better (I use both Arial and Verdana. Verdana may default to Geneva: Sans serif, but shapes and sizes not like Arial's.)

That's all I had time for; didn't test the Netscape browser. Didn't test browsing with tabs against same-or-new-window. I'm not planning to take this any further unless and until I need to publish for a Mac environment.

If anyone has more experience testing or using Leopard for WebHelp, please post.

Thanks.

Harvey

[Moonlion2]

Wow, thanks super-much for this post. I'm primarily a Mac user and this information was very helpful and informative.

>Search results work fine in both.

That's excellent because that's the most important function I need.

[Moonlion2]

Oh, and to answer your question: Yes, unless there's a Mac version of RH, you'll need to run it from within Windows, which means buying a separate copy of Windows and installing it under Boot Camp (a feature within Mac OSX) which you can only do on Intel-based Mac, yes.

I've not done this myself because, eww, Windows, but from everything I've heard doing such things works splendidly and seamlessly well, with applications running just as quickly and just as well (or not) as if you're using a regular PC, including networking, graphics, games, the lot. This is because you boot the Mac into Windows, so it gets all of the machine's resources devoted to it.

There are also applications that allow you to run both OSs simultaneously with Windows in emulation. That works well too from what I hear, but it's obviously slower going because the machine's resources are divided, so to speak. With an app as big and complex as RH I'd be hesitant to run it in emulation but who knows? Might work like a charm...

[ksaccal]

We are long time RoboHelp users that have been disappointed with the search and index display on Mac. They have sucked for many years. We have had many customer complaints over the years about the search and index on Mac. All of our complaints to RoboHelp fell on deaf ears with corporate respondents insisting "it works".

We are currently RoboHelp X5 users and are researching other solutions. We are looking for a solution cross platform, Windows and Mac. We are not looking for a Mac authoring environment, just to be able to run the output on Mac in an equivalent manor, appearance and with the same functionality. We do need a solution that is available in German, French and Japanese.

We have been using RoboHelp X5 with HTMLHelp as the output.

Has anyone tried migrating their existing X5 project up to RoboHelp 7 and then trying to use the output on Mac? The Mac targets are 10.4 and 10.5. Because the RoboHelp authoring environment has been and is Windows only, all of our help development in done on Windows. We are not looking for a Mac authoring environment, just to be able to run the output on Mac in an equivalent manor, with similar appearance and with the same functionality.

[HKabaker]

I can vouch for RH7 WebHelp output using Safari or Firefox in the Leopard (10.5) environment.

HTML help is a Microsoft creation, I believe. I haven't used it for a long time.

My guess is, you would need to run the chm in a Windows mode on a Mac. But I haven't tried it.

Please report your results.

Thanks.

Harvey

[Peter Grainge]

Is this post related to an offline enquiry I have received?

If not, what specifically is the issue with the search and index?

[HKabaker]

Peter,
For WebHelp (I don't know about chm):

The Index defaulted to the alternative display, each keyword listed with topic numbers (not titles), and you clicked a number to go to the topic. Type-to-find a keyword didn't work.

With RH7 (maybe 6?) and Mac OS X Leopard on Intel machines, just as in Windows, each keyword shows a popup list of topics, or links directly to a single topic. Type-to-find works.

(I don't know for certain about PowerPC Macs, or OS 10.4.)

Search results had a similar shortcoming, I think, but I can't recall precisely.

My initial query was whether anyone was running RH on a Mac.

Regards,

Harvey

[Peter Grainge]

Sorry Harvey, my post was aimed at ksaccal.

I've sent the person who offlined me an output that worked OK in Safari on windows and am waiting for the comments when run on a Mac.