RoboHelp for FrameMaker

Hello,
I'm aware that RH for FrameMaker was discontinued a few years
ago, but we're considering using it as we have no desire to use
Quadralay ePublisher (a huge step back from WebWorks). Are there
any resellers in the U.S.? I'm only aware of the UK reseller
www.power2comm.com. Also, we use Frame 7.1 and we're wondering if
there will be incompatibilities with RH for Frame.
Thanks in advance!!!

As far as I know, RHF doesn't support FrameMaker 7.2, as 7.2
came out significantly after RHF. It seems to recognize FrameMaker
7.1, but has problems with more recent versions of Distiller that
ship with more recent versions of FrameMaker. I'd suspect that
Frame 7.0p578 would be the best option for withing with RHF.
However, you CAN have multiple versions of FrameMaker on the
same system. So you could have Frame 7.0 (for use with RHF) and
Frame 7.2 for other projects on the same system. Save your
FrameMaker files as MIF files for maximum portability across
different versions.
The sticking point will be Distiller - multiple versions of
Distiller on a system can cause all sorts of issues.

Similar Messages

RoboHelp for FrameMaker and FrameMaker 8

I still use the legendary, yet discontinued and unsupported, "RoboHelp for FrameMaker". However, when I installed my new Tech Comm Suite and FM 8. RoboHelp for FrameMaker would not work with FM 8. I know this is a long shot, but does anyone know a workaround to get the defunct RoboHelp for FrameMaker to work with FrameMaker 8? Please do not suggest using RoboHelp to convert the files. That engine is terrible. Also, RoboHelp for FrameMaker, four years later, is still better than mif2go and ePublisher by Webworks.

Mark,
I meant RH for FrameMaker, and ..
"... RH for FM uses skins, it creates a web help system with a collapsible/expandable TOC, integrated client-side search engine, a better interface for mapping of styles and including or excluding conditional text, and it publishes to a web server. There are many other features."
You can easily substitute RH for FM with ePublisher and add quite a bit more. Since ePublisher to a great extend relies on XML there are so many other cool things you can do.
I am NOT saying it is easier, just that I like it more, and that it supports all of FM's features (incl. 8). The jobs I'm doing at the moment in ePublsher cannot yet be made by RH for FM. (Also I'm integrating both FM and Word and some xMetal XML output into the same help system!
But again it's a matter of opinion. And what you need to accomplish
In a recent seminar by RJ Jacquez from Adobe he admitted that the Tech Com Suite (and RH for FM) was an entry to the market and that they had some way to go yet for RH to 'compete' with ePublisher.
On the price side I quite agree. WebWorks has some pretty steep prices. Which at the same are completely and utterly impossible to understand. I have been given threee different prices for the same solution! Just to mention.
keep smiling
thomas

RoboHelp for FrameMaker requirements

I have v1.1 of RoboHelp for FrameMaker and v7.2 FrameMaker.
RoboHelp complains that FrameMaker is not installed. Is v7.2 not
supported? Is there a way I can fool RoboHelp into using it anyway
(filename changes, etc.)?

As far as I know, RHF doesn't support FrameMaker 7.2, as 7.2
came out significantly after RHF. It seems to recognize FrameMaker
7.1, but has problems with more recent versions of Distiller that
ship with more recent versions of FrameMaker. I'd suspect that
Frame 7.0p578 would be the best option for withing with RHF.
However, you CAN have multiple versions of FrameMaker on the
same system. So you could have Frame 7.0 (for use with RHF) and
Frame 7.2 for other projects on the same system. Save your
FrameMaker files as MIF files for maximum portability across
different versions.
The sticking point will be Distiller - multiple versions of
Distiller on a system can cause all sorts of issues.

Revive RoboHelp for FrameMaker

I am interested in knowing how many people out there remember
RoboHelp for FrameMaker (RHF) and how many are interested in
reviving it. It was an excellent, easy-to-use extension of RoboHelp
that made it really easy to publish FrameMaker in a number of
on-line help formats. It was abruptly forced to EOL when Macromedia
bought eHelp. Its users/supporters made a valiant effort to save
it, but it was so new there wasn't a huge user base yet and it
never got the chance to develop the following it would have. It was
the easiest way to create full-featured on-line help systems that
has yet been devised, and I would like to open a dialog about
reviving it.
Now that Adobe Systems has acquired Macromedia, it makes
sense to revisit the issue of reviving RHF.
If you are interested at all, please forward this information
to other FrameMaker users.
Thanks.
[email protected]

I would be very interested in seeing RoboHelp for FrameMaker
revived. I have been trying to use RoboHelp Office X5 with my
FrameMaker user guide for weeks and have run in to nothing but
problems. I've tried importing the .mif files, but it's
inconsistent and doesn't allow me to update the graphics. I've also
tried RoboHelp's other suggestion which is converting the
FrameMaker documents to Word documents first. I was surprised that
they are encouraging use of a competitor's software (if I just
write in Word I skip a step). I'm also surprised they know their
software so little. FrameMaker has never converted to Word well and
usually blows up somewhere in the process. I've also tried finding
answers to my FrameMaker/RoboHelp questions in forums, but it seems
that there aren't too many people trying this because I haven't
found or received any answers to my questions and have hardly found
anything relating to .mif and RoboHelp.
Sorry for the rant, but I have just been very disappointed in
this process when it used to be so easy to create and maintain
online help using FrameMaker documents.

Unable to install robohelp plugin for framemaker

Hi,
I have FM8 and RoboHelp HTML 9. When I open a new project and try to import a FrameMaker document or book I get the "unable to install robohelp plugin for framemaker" error.
I tried with FrmaMaker open and closed - same thing.
With RH7 it used to work.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Rakefet

Unsure about the plugin message, but you can import FM into RH9. The problem may be that you have a current RH9, but not a current FM10. Try downloading a trial of FM10, create a v10 copy of your book, and see if that imports.
Mark's comment applies to linking, but not to importing.
-Matt
@mattrsullivan

Robohelp 6, Framemaker and WebWorks integration?

I'm responsible for technical documentation at my company.
Yesterday I received an email about Robohelp 6, and decided to
check it out.
I've used Robohelp before and quite liked it. It's very
useful if you have an existing documentation base in Microsoft
Word; owever nearly all the companies I've worked at that have a
substantial documentation base use Framemaker and not Word as their
standard documentation platform, for a wide variety of reasons.
So, I'm a little disappointed to notice that Robohelp 6
really can't be used practically with Framemaker. Sure, I can
translate all my files to MIF and import them, but then this forces
me to go ahead and translate a lot of documentation manually (the
functionality to do a batch format conversion just doesn't exist).
It also forces me to keep two sets of documents (you can't generate
TOCs or IXs from MIF files apparently). That's just not acceptable
considering that the same company makes both applications.
Evidently RH6 isn't even able to use Framemaker to translate
documents on the fly the way that a third-party application like
WebWorks is able to do.
Seriously, I can't even say that the products are poorly
integrated, because they're evidently not integrated in any way.
This wouldn't be so bad if Frame 7.2 included the decent
version of WebWorks that used to be included with Frame 6.x,
or was even compatible with that version! But it's not. You
can't use Frame 7.2 with WebWorks. You're stuck with using
ePublisher, which isn't even close to an acceptable replacement as
it's a huge downgrade from the previous bundled app.
So, another online help solution is a dire necessity here,
and Adobe, despite owning both the Robohelp and Framemaker, is
either unable or unwilling to make both work together for a reason
which really escapes me. The one FAQ entry on the subject is beyond
vague and noncommittal and smacks of a half-answer designed to
"stop the technical writers whining about this".
Additionally, considering that Adobe itself is still to this
day bundling Quadralay products with Framemaker, wouldn't it be the
logically expected thing for Robohelp to be able to import WebWorks
and ePublisher projects, at least in part? Yet I don't see any way
in which this can be done.
Robohelp 6 is not a cheap product. At a grand a seat, it
costs more than Photoshop, despite being a much simpler product
(certainly in technical terms). I'd LOVE to be able to recommend
that my company buy a few licenses, but this is really not
something that I can do at this time, nor do I foresee a time when
I'll be able to do so unfortunately.
What can I, as a senior technical writer, expect Adobe to do
to resolve what I see as a serious impasse here?

Hi, tonyemond and welcome to the pond
You may not be aware, but Adobe only recently (within the
last year or so) acquired RoboHelp in the Macromedia deal. I can
understand your frustration and many of the issues you raise are
being addressed in the next version of RoboHelp which is being
developed as we "speak". In fact, it is so far along that you are
invited to join the Adobe RoboHelp pre-release (beta) program for
the next version.
You can find details here.
Adobe
Technical Communications Blog
I got to attend the sneak peek sessions at STC in Minneapolis
last month where Adobe showed many new features. As you may know,
there is a new version of Framemaker in beta as well (and Adobe
Captivate, too!). So, it takes a while to integrate these
leap-frogging targets. The wait will be rewarded however.
Enjoy!
john

What is the right CMS for FrameMaker 11 and DITA?

Hello,
I am looking for a good CMS for FrameMaker 11. I already tried componize for Alfresco, but it does not solve our problems. Some important requirements are:
- comfortable editor which can be easily used by authors without XML/DITA/FrameMaker-knowledge
- creating DITA-imagemaps (CMS editor)
- creating DITA-templates without special knowledge or using FrameMaker-templates without problems
In componize it was possible to download DITA-maps and open them in FrameMaker. But I don`t know how to format a whole DITA-map in FrameMaker - is it possible? Because it wouldn´t be very comfortable to format every single topic by using an EDD..
Another idea was to import the whole DITA-map to RoboHelp for formatting, but it didn`t work because of a missing DITA Open Toolkit-Folder? I did download DITA Open Toolkit, but I was not able to install it. Why do I need this for RoboHelp and not for FrameMaker?
And for the templates: is there an easy way to create FrameMaker-DITA-templates? I read a lot about EDDs, R/W-rules and DTDs but it seems to be very complicated for non-experts to create all these different documents. And there are less help documents like demonstration videos to learn it on my own.
For me it seems to be like "before you are able to work with RoboHelp-FrameMaker-Templates-Outputs-CMS, learn a lot of programming languages and become an IT-specialist." - so very complicated, not comfortable, not intuitively.
A lot of questions, maybe some of you have some good ideas and solutions! Thanks

A CMS (content management system) is used for storing, retrieving, and managing files. Some CMS products are specialized for DITA. But they don't usually come with the ability to create and edit maps and topics. For that, you need a DITA editor. FrameMaker is a pretty good DITA editor (especially with the DITA-FMx plugin from Leximation).
DITA maps don't need formatting. They're simply organized collections of DITA topics. The topics do need formatting in order to deliver outputs. FrameMaker can format them for print or PDF output, and is exceptionally good for this purpose. It can't directly format DITA for other outputs. For this, FrameMaker and many other products rely on the DITA-OT, which can format DITA for many outputs, such as CHM, Eclipse, or JavaHelp (and also PDF, but without the same power as FrameMaker).
To format the topics for page output, FrameMaker uses an EDD. All DITA topics are formatted using the same EDD, and Frame does this "behind the scenes" so you usually don't have to worry about it (although you can make custom adjustments to the EDD if you want).
If you are using DITA, it's a good idea to install the DITA-OT and get it working with other products. There's a Yahoo group called dita-users where you can get help with this.
As an alternative to the DITA-OT, you might want to look at DITA2Go or DITA4Publishers.

New Category for FrameMaker Integration

Hi Everyone,
Welcome to Adobe Support Forums. Since a number of posts for
FrameMaker and RoboHelp integration were spread across a number of
categories, a new category has been created. Please use this
category for your posts on FrameMaker integration with RoboHelp.
You can also browse through a number of blog posts we have on
the Adobe Technical Communication Blog (
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm).
regards
Vivek Jain
Adobe Systems

I've got passable skills with FM8 and am porting over those
files to RH7.
While I got many "crash" notices from FM, RH pulled in all
the files. Now, I have eight questions that need answering before
correcting my problems.
Should I list them all here? Or a new topic for every
question?

RoboHelp for Frame

Hi everyone.
I am using RoboHelp for Frame - yeah, yeah, and have been
tasked to build a parent help system with child help systems. The
product my company builds is actually a suite of products
individually sold and packaged - and launched through a web portal.
My engineers want to be able offer help through the portal in the
same modular fashion, so if a customer buys product 1 and 2 - they
get help for 1 and 2 and not 1,2,3,and 4.
I have used RoboHelp X5 and built a similiar system using a
merged help project approach. Can this be done with RH for Frame? I
don't think the functionality is there. I can import the source
files and even import a Webworks project - but not RH. Does anyone
know if this is possible? Is there a work around?
Any help, references to somewhere I can read something -
anything would be appreciated because I'm guessing Adobe doesn't
offer support for this obsolete product.
Thank you.
Denice

Have you investigated the User Defined HTML tag option displayed below?
-Matt
Matt R. Sullivan
co-author Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11

This is a bit of information for folks that use Robohelp for Word.

I know this is all a day late and a follar short but for those folks that still use Robohelp for Word:
If your company is going to Windows 7, X5 will not work. You need to bump it up to at least RH8.
Even after you upgrade, if you use the tripane (winhelp_2000) view in RH for Word, it will not work on Windows 7 even with the microsoft patch. With the patch it will look like an older version of RH in winhelp_4. At least I have not been able to get it to display.
What will work is if you compile it in Webhelp. You will loose some links. I know I should be moving to Robhelp Html and I tried, but when I did that I got a lot of garbage at the top of all my topics, I lost all my external links and I would have to retrain my partner...
Now about links. My only complaint about Robohelp for Word was it's limited external linking capacity. If you use RH for Word you know you can only brouse to the net or to an htm or html document. It doesn't mean you can't link to a PDF or an excel spread sheet. You just can't brouse to it. You can manually enter the path. I just changed 740+ htm links to pdf links (pdf in same file as htm and the names were the same except for extension) and it worked. If you intend to try this back up.
Anyway, if this helps anyone great..if not thanks for letting me babble. I like my Robohelp for Word in Webhelp format.
Peggy Theo.

Thanks for posting this Peggy.
It is worth adding that there is another way of continuing to work with Word - using Linked Documents in RoboHelp HTML. You create Word documents entirely independent of RoboHelp and then create topics by linking those documents in a RoboHelp HTML project.
You cannot create WinHelp that way but WinHelp is on life support and requires users to download a viewer, you cannot distribute it. It really is time to move on from WinHelp.
RoboHelp for Word is not getting much development and does not get the new features being added to RoboHelp HTML.
Linking is covered on my site.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RoboHelp for HTML 9 - Problem with viewing .chm file on 64bit machine

I am working with RoboHelp for HTML 9 on a 32 bit machine. Recently, we encountered problems when viewing a .chm file on a 64 bit machine. The TOC was fine, but the topics did not appear, only error message "Navigation of this web page cancelled". My compilation settings did not change since the last compilation some months ago. What happens?

Generally, I've only ever seen the need to ensure the CHM is unblocked if it has been downloaded from the web. I could see where it could possibly occur if one moved the CHM from a network drive to a local drive, but I'm skeptical that would be required in that case.
Cheers... Rick

Generating RoboHelp for Word with RH6 in HTML Doesn't Remove MSO styles

Here's the Word portion of the question, which I really
should post under a separate heading. (The WebHelp portion is under
WebHelp - DiMost, posted March 19, 2007)
In RHx5, I use(d) RoboHelp for Word to convert my documents
from an Information Mapping format (with tables) to a stripped-down
document that I converted to HTML without all the Word inline
styles.
- Applied a "conversion" template to the doc
- Imported the doc into the RH for Word file.
- Converted the styles and removed page breaks
- Converted ONE heading to the main topic
- Created WinHelp and checked to be sure there are no
corrupted tables and the topic converted
- Generated in WebHelp
- Imported the HTML document output to the main WebHelp
project. (The document arrives without all the MSO word inline
styles)
- Applied the CSS for the project.
Document conversion complete....all the inline styles were
removed.
NOW, RH 6 retains all the styles and converts every heading
style to a topic, even though RH5 did not.
Converting it in RoboHelp for Word x5 worked really well, but
doesn't appear to work now. And importing the Word doc directly
into RH6 for the WebHelp project is still the huge mess it was
before. It looks like it still requires hand-stripping all that
code out by hand.
Believe me, I have tried everything (including freestanding
apps) to get rid of the Word (MSO-whatever) embedded styles out of
the Word HTML.
I welcome any ideas. Thanks!
Diana

I don't think anything changed on defining what should be a
new topic. Check the options as you import as that can make such a
difference and of course your RH6 settings will be different
initially.

Upgrading to Windows 7 with Robohelp for Word X5

Currently using Robohelp for Word X5 on Windows XP Professional with Microsoft Office 2003.
I'm a consultant and my client's IT department is planning to upgrade to Windows 7. Does anyone know if X5 will work with Windows 7?
Thanks,
Brenda Hutch
Consultant

I very much doubt you have a snowball's chance in hell. Rh 8 was the first version to be supported under Windows 7 and then only when patched.
Another consideration is that even if it did work, the outputs would not be compatible with modern browsers. They would not work on Chrome for example. Time to upgrade more than the operating system is my take.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

Error launching Word with Robohelp for Word

I have a test rack at work with a machine dedicated to Robohelp, which we just purchased and set up to replace our very old and outdated solution. It has Robohelp 8 on Windows 7, with Office 2007. Since the Robohelp installation, Word has consistent and constant crashes, giving an error claiming that Macros are required but unable to start. I entered the Trust Center in Word as instructed, and reset macros, but to no avail. Attempting to launch Word in Robohelp for Word causes an exception and error. Launching Word on its own also causes the same error. I've tried a Office repair, to no avail. Does anyone have any experience with this issue?

I've know RoboHelp have issues finding Word or working with the wrong security settings. What I have not known it do is affect the running of Word when Word is run alone. For that reason, I think your problem is with Word.
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RoboHelp for Word installed from RoboHelp 10 won't work with Word 2010

I have a Help project created in RoboHelp for Word 8. I recently upgraded from Word 2007 to Word 2010 and discovered that RH8 for Word won't work with Word 2010. So I purchased RoboHelp 10 and have installed RoboHelp for Word from it. Alas, RH for Word STILL won't work with Word 2010. When I try to open my project, I get this message:
Before I bought RH10, I live-chatted with an Adobe sales person who assured me it was compatible with Word 2010.
BTW, I tried to roll back to Word 2007, but I was getting weird behavior running Word, so I have reinstalled Word 2010 and want to stay there.
Any ideas?

I have just installed Rh10 for Word on a new machine and initially I got this message.
I wonder if you have followed those instuctions? I changed the setting to Enable All.
The other possibility is what do you have set for the default version? If it is 2007 and that no longer exists on your machine, then Rh will not be able to proceed. The dropdown should show 2010
See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
@petergrainge

RoboHelp for FrameMaker

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