RH 7 files compatible with RH Server 8?

[bjones91]

Hello,

My company is looking to purchase RH Server 8 to replace our outdated RoboEngine 3 (or 4).  The help files were designed by a contractor originally and she came back last year to help us update them.  She did so using RH7.  Now I am trying get RH Server to host the files with from our webserver and the enterprise says they will approve the purchase if we can go with RH Server 8.  Are the files she created with RH7 going to be compatible with RH Server 8?

TIA,

Brad

[johndaigle]

Hi, Brad.

Do you mean the RH 7 output files which were published to the older server? In that case, no.

What needs to happen is this. You open the RH 7 project either in RH 7 or RH 8 (good idea if you are upgrading to RH Server 8 but not mandatory.)

Then, from either RH 7 or RH 8, you would republish the WebHelp Pro or FlashHelp Pro to the new RH Server 8

If for some reason you can't upgrade the authoring tool to RH 8, then you must apply a patch to RH 7 in order to publish to the RH Server 8.

You'll find that patch here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html

John Daigle
Adobe Certified RoboHelp and Captivate Instructor
Evergreen, Colorado
www.showmethedemo.com

[bjones91]

Thanks for the quick reply and info John.  So we must have the authoring tool to publish from?  She left some months ago and simply zipped up the output files and handed them off to me.  Do we need to now also purchase the authoring tool if we intend to publish to RH Server 8?  That's what it sounds like.

[johndaigle]

Yes you will need the authoring tool to Publish the content. Perhaps you could locate her or a contractor with RH that can do this for you? But, I'm assuming you might want to purchase the authoring tool in case you need to make future changes in content.

RH Server 8 was completely re-architected and uses an open source Apache Tomcat Server. This improves performance and is less buggy that the old RoboEngine which relied solely on IIS. With the new version you can use IIS or not.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

Hopefully my esteemed colleague John won't mind my making a small observation here.

I see that Brad is advising he only has access to the OUTPUT files.

While it's certainly possible to re-purpose them as project files, they won't provide everything you need. If you are going to end up purchasing the RoboHelp authoring component, you really need to have the SOURCE files the contractor used to create the output.

These are much different than the output files and will actually include files that never see the light of day in output, but are necessary for the project.

Cheers... Rick

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