Any Robohelp features preferred to Flare's?

[keuler]

For those of you familiar with both Robohelp 8 and Flare 5, are there any Robohelp features that you prefer over Flare's for Help authoring? I'm considering upgrading from Robohelp 7 to one of these. (Assume the learning curve for each is not a factor.)

Thanks!

-Kurt

[Andrew]

I think there are two things I miss in Flare that I had in RoboHelp (X5, but I'm pretty sure they are still there in RH8):

- Relatively quick and easy method of finding topics, as your complete list of topics has a find-as-you-type by topic title. When you have thousands of topics spread across dozens of folders, that's a godsend.

- Much faster method of creating inter-topic links.

Otherwise, I can't remember too much that I like about RoboHelp that Flare doesn't do just as well or better.

[LTinker68]

- Relatively quick and easy method of finding topics, as your complete list of topics has a find-as-you-type by topic title. When you have thousands of topics spread across dozens of folders, that's a godsend.

Flare has a File List view that lists all topics. You don't get the find-as-you-type option, but you can sort on the (file)name or title field and then scroll.

Much faster method of creating inter-topic links.

Not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean as you're typing in a topic you want to quickly insert a link to another topic? Because you can do that easily in Flare. If you're typing in a topic, you can drag a topic from the Content Explorer into the current topic. When you do so, you get the Insert Hyperlink screen or the Insert Cross-Reference screen. Which screen you get depends on if the XML Editor is set to web layout (hyperlink) or print layout (cross-reference).

[Paul Griffiths]

In no particular order:

• Rename and delete condition tags. You can rename condition tag sets in Flare, but not the individual tags.
• Boolean operators in conditional tag expressions. Actually, I don't miss these too much.
• Stored conditional tag expressions, so I don't have to reapply them one tag at a time in Preview.
• A Preview pane that applies the correct styles when you jump between topics. If you are using a master stylesheet, only the current topic is correctly styled in Preview (although even that ignores the medium).

I find RoboHelp's indexing workflow slightly easier, but I haven't done much indexing in Flare yet.

(I also agree with the point about finding files. You can sort the File List by Path, but it'd be nice to filter by Path too.)

[Andrew]

- Relatively quick and easy method of finding topics, as your complete list of topics has a find-as-you-type by topic title. When you have thousands of topics spread across dozens of folders, that's a godsend.

Flare has a File List view that lists all topics. You don't get the find-as-you-type option, but you can sort on the (file)name or title field and then scroll.
The find-as-you-type is what I liked so much. It was FAST. Scrolling through 7000 topics in the File List panel is extremely slow. Trying to type out file names with a * in the Filter box of the File List panel is slow, and somewhat less useful.

Much faster method of creating inter-topic links.

Not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean as you're typing in a topic you want to quickly insert a link to another topic? Because you can do that easily in Flare. If you're typing in a topic, you can drag a topic from the Content Explorer into the current topic. When you do so, you get the Insert Hyperlink screen or the Insert Cross-Reference screen. Which screen you get depends on if the XML Editor is set to web layout (hyperlink) or print layout (cross-reference).

I mean in RoboHelp creating inter-topic links was fast. I can't remember the exact procedure any more, but IIRC, it was a find-as-you-type scenario, similar to the Topic List. You didn't have to know which one of your 50 folders the topic was in, didn't have to scroll through the topics to find the one you want.

[Andrew Heard]

I don't recall that inter-topic hyperlinks were any easier in RH - pretty much the same.

Indexing was certainly easier in RH - all index entries for a topic listed in a separate dialog.

In RH you can easily set the size of graphics. Supposed to be possible in Flare, but I haven't made it work, so I scale the original (better quality that way in any case).

I liked the RH Topics tab, in which you could sort by file name or topic title and see the topic properties all in one shot.

Context-sensitive mapping easier in RH, I think.

All other features better in Flare IMO and (now that I'm familiar) I find the interface more usable by a long way.

[MC Hammer]

I agree with Andrew for the following:
- Context-Sensitive Help mapping more user-friendly and easier in RH (I even sometimes open my version 5 of RH just for checking some CSH mapping )
- Image-resizing in Flare causes some blurring for certain formats. I now use a set for my icons/buttons, with several gifs / pngs correspondig to several sizes depending if the image is to be used inside text or in a table, or in a toolbar.
- Index keywords. I am still getting used on how to visualise all the index keywords for a single topic in Flare!

I am sure most of this is due to me having worked with RH for several years. Habits die hard
Hope this helps.

[gewriter_2]

The only thing I really miss is the topic map web feature. Other than that, there's not really much that I preferred RH over Flare.

[i-tietz]

My RH experience comes from RH9 - long ago and I don't know whether your RH version still has these features:

- Glossary
In RH it was in a separate glossary tab (HTML Help): User clicks on a term and the description is displayed in frame beneath the term list.
The Search did not search in glossary. Flare does. This is no improvement though, because the found string is neither highlighted nor shown - you have to open all glossary terms and look for yourself where the string was found - the user feels messed about with!
AND: No, the quicksearch doesn't help!
Right now we're thinking about producing a completely different help file (HTML Help) for the glossary. But that takes away those automatic glossary term features (i.e. first occurrence, ... ) - a lot of work to "copy" bits of them manually!

- Creating context sensitive help (CSH)
We used to simply name the topics (id) with the id we got from the developers and import the header files. RH did the rest.
In Flare we have to assign id <-> topic manually ...

- Working inside a network
RH 9: It was possible to change paths for project files like the header files. That way those files always were up-to-date, because we changed the path and always included the latest header files on the developers disk.
Flare: the project folder is a local one with a fixed structure - not even subfolders are possible.

- Editor
RH: Word
Flare: XML editor
For editors with hardly any software background and technical understanding XMl editors are hard to handle.

+ Conditions
None in RH 9. Flare has got them - that's really nice!

+ Snippets
None in RH 9.
Flare: Really helpful feature!

[RamonS]

- Editor
RH: Word
Flare: XML editor
For editors with hardly any software background and technical understanding XMl editors are hard to handle.

I acknowledge that everyone has an opinion, but not having Word as editor is a minus? If anything, it is one of the main reasons to ditch RH because it imports the excessive weaknesses and flaws of Word, especially for projects of a particular size. Before Flare came along I switched to RH for HTML mainly because Word just rapidly inhales, back then and even more today. I had a help with 700 topics and RH for Word either crashed or blew up. Word is just not designed to handle anything beyond 100 to 150 pages, and that is something that Microsoft states as well.
Yea, Word is easier for the writer of casual business communications, but any TW should be capable of handling the XML editor. I think anyone can get work done ignoring anything XML about the XML editor assuming they have some very basic knowledge about what a CSS does. The complexity comes in when you turn all the goodies on in the editor, but I think learning to handle that is well worth the effort.

The other points, I can't argue with those.

[i-tietz]

Yea, Word is easier for the writer of casual business communications, but any TW should be capable of handling the XML editor. I think anyone can get work done ignoring anything XML about the XML editor assuming they have some very basic knowledge about what a CSS does. The complexity comes in when you turn all the goodies on in the editor, but I think learning to handle that is well worth the effort.

At least half the technical editors I know prefer to work with word processing or DTP, because it's a lot easier to handle than anything else. And that preference is perfectly legitimate.

And yet another Microsoft-bashing-session is not helpful. But maybe you can get Adobe to use Open Office for RH - trying that you might notice that Adobe is a lot less user-friendly than even MS ...
Writing that I want to extend my list of pros and contras:
The support from MadCap is at least ten times better than that from Adobe!

Inge

p.s.: We had a few projects with more than 2.000 topics each in RH and it worked perfectly well - even working in a network. And yes: We also had word documents > twohundred pages.

[RamonS]

Word is not a DTP application and I yet have to find someone who thinks that Microsoft Office is a high quality product. It is buggy and bloated. That is no bashing, that is an established fact. Just read the various technical publications.
In regards to creating help, Word as editor brings absolutely nothing to the table. The only positive aspect I can see is that due to the monopoly position of Microsoft everyone got to know Word (which was negated by introducing the ribbon). And from what I recall, that was the sole purpose eHelp selected Word as editor rather than to create their own (which they eventually did with the HTML editor).
Your mileage may vary, but I published a book using OpenOffice and had no problems. On the hunt for the best PDF output I also loaded the document into Word. Word crashed and hosed the file. I tried that on multiple systems with different Word versions. What else can I say than that Word in my opinion is just bad software.

I really don't care anymore what Adobe uses as editor. I don't like Adobe and avoid their products as much as possible. In regards to quality, support, and pricing they are not better than Microsoft. Usually, companies with that attitude towards customers go away after a short time, but for whatever reason many people consider it a wise idea to keep buying their products. There are only three good things Adobe produced:
PDF - because it showed that system independent, portable documents can be created
Flash - because as bad or good as it is, Flash lead the way to RIA
Frame - because it gave a good alternative bringing DTP to the PC platform (DTP used to be owned by Apple)

So rather than convincing Adobe to pull their heads out of their rears I rather see MadCap get where the waves are going. That means support ODF as well as many other truly open formats, platforms, and technologies. Next generation Flare should also drop the .NET ties. .NET will go away in a few years for the next best thing (probably fully machine executable applications, something Delphi gets dissed for these days). Bashing again? No way! Just look what happened to the very popular VB6 platform.

[Andrew]

I acknowledge that everyone has an opinion, but not having Word as editor is a minus? If anything, it is one of the main reasons to ditch RH because it imports the excessive weaknesses and flaws of Word, especially for projects of a particular size. Before Flare came along I switched to RH for HTML mainly because Word just rapidly inhales, back then and even more today. I had a help with 700 topics and RH for Word either crashed or blew up. Word is just not designed to handle anything beyond 100 to 150 pages, and that is something that Microsoft states as well.

Even the HTML editor in RoboHTML was easier to use than Flare's XML Editor. (That's not to say I thought it was better; quite the contrary.)

I yet have to find someone who thinks that Microsoft Office is a high quality product

Now you have. I'm not entirely happy with Office, but then, I've never found any software with which I was entirely (or even mostly) happy. I've used other office suites (such as OO.o and googledocs), and they are no less buggy, while being of lower quality. And you are passing off opinion as fact, but I expect that as a matter of course when you talk about Microsoft-anything.

[RamonS]

Well, a malformed document can hose your entire system if you open it in Word. Just look at the security advisories from Microsoft and 3rd part security vendors about Word and MSO in general. Even zero day exploits aren't fixed in a timely manner. How can it be that something silly like a PowerPoint presentation or a Word document can bring down an entire system? We could get into an argument about bug counts and severity, but since Microsoft doesn't publicly discloses this information unless it has to any such comparison is flawed from the start. Taking OOo as example, everyone can see what is broken and I filed plenty of bug reports and help get many of them fixed.
That said, given how expensive MSO is expecting top notch quality, functionality, and customization is OK. OOo, Googledocs, or the SoftMaker Office Suite come in at no or in comparison a ridiculously low cost and that without the baggage of flawed, proprietary file formats and excessive security risks. And that is not just some blahblah, but a professional evaluation from someone who works as QA analyst in software development for over a decade, but that doesn't count when disagreeing with Microsoft I guess. How come that one only gets considered as not reputable when criticizing Microsoft?

In any case, Flare's XML editor is definitely not a negative when comparing it to other HATs or even other editors. Increased functionality always brings complexity with it. Given how much one can get out of the Flare editor I find it pleasant and easy to use. I worked with editors and IDEs that did far less and were way more complicated. I agree that it isn't as easy as Word, but that is saying Word is too complicated because it isn't as easy as Notepad.

[i-tietz]

Let's just say that there are others that have made more and/or different experiences. Since this is a DISCUSSION forum one should be susceptive to arguments.
For keuler that means: Listen to RamonS and listen to others - even if those opinions are on extreme ends and make a decision difficult.