RSS 
Email 
Twitter
Facebook10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Robohelp 6
February 7th, 2007 | Posted in Technical Writing 23 Comments »
Although I currently use RoboHelp 5, I can think of at least 10 good reasons not to upgrade to RoboHelp 6.
1. Communication from Adobe is bleak.
Have you ever posted a comment on their blog? After I finished the RoboHelp podcast on Tech Writer Voices, I posted a comment on the Adobe RoboHelp blog letting them know about the podcast. I assumed my comment was in moderation, but apparently it was filtered. Maybe Adobe didn’t like the podcast.
I followed up to ask if the comment got lost in the moderation queue. No response. Today I just checked again and saw that someone else’s comment had been approved. Vivek Jain, Adobe’s RoboHelp blogger, either is totally clueless about responding to comments, or he doesn’t understand that a blog is not a PR marketing vehicle. But even the senior project evangelist, R.J. Jacquez, seems like he’s a mute. Sorry Adobe, but you really get a D when it comes to communication.
2. RoboHelp doesn’t support character level indexing.
This is probably the biggest strike against using RoboHelp as a single sourcing tool. If all you create is online documentation, the printed documentation indexing glitch isn’t an issue. But if you do output to print, your index will never be accurate because all the keywords are crammed into the topic headings rather than where they appear in the document. So if your topic spans 3 pages, and the keywords relate to the last page, the index will point the reader to the first page, where the header is.
3. RoboHelp doesn’t support cross references.
If you link to another topic in the online help, when you output to printed documentation, the link doesn’t translate into a cross reference. So basically you would have to manually do all your cross references, or use a touchy macro workaround.
4. RoboHelp isn’t compatible with Word 2007.
RoboHelp isn’t compatible with Word 2007 (nor with Vista), so when Vista and Office 2007 become mainstream, Adobe will either have to fix or bury RoboHelp. If they bury it, they will anger an immense group of RoboHelp users who recently spent $500 for the upgrade.
5. RoboHelp requires at least 15 macros to clean up printed documentation output (e.g., numbering).
I don’t know how anyone who outputs to printed documentation with RoboHelp can go straight to PDF without extensive cleanup. I run at least 15 macros in my output before the output is acceptable. Numbering is particularly problematic. I guess this all depends on your printed documentation style.
6. With RoboHelp, figure references are problematic.
Let’s say you refer to screenshots in printed documentation with figure references, such as See Figure 5, and so on. If you’re using RoboHelp as a single sourcing tool, and selecting different topics and arrangements for your print layout, the placement of “Figure 5″ may change wildly with each output. This is essentially the same problem as the cross references, and there is no easy workaround.
7. RoboHelp’s command line compile doesn’t work on networks.
I don’t use the command-line compile feature, but if I did, I would be pretty upset about it not working across a network. Shouldn’t that have been disclosed in the release notes?
8. RoboHelp’s style pane is not undockable.
If you structure your writing with styles, RoboHelp’s style editor may just about drive you crazy. It doesn’t undock, you can’t change the order (the default arrangement is always alphabetical), and most frustrating, if you change the name of a style, everything that previously had that style applied to it requires re-application of the style with the new name.
9. RoboHelp’s interface is 1996.
Everytime I open RoboHelp, I think I’m going back to 1996. The whole interface needs upgrading. Put in some Ajax. Get some better graphics. This may be a small point, but c’mon. I get the feeling that what’s on the outside reflects the inside.
10. RoboHelp’s apparent ease of use is only because you’ve been using it for 10 years.
If people say that RoboHelp is easy to use, consider how long you’ve been using it. Almost everything gets easy to use when you use it constantly.
By the way, Monkey PI recently wrote a great post about RoboHelp that I recommend as good blog reading.
A less emotional take on RoboHelp Rob Houser of User Assistance Group, Inc. has a review of RoboHelp 6 available at WritersUA. The food fight over RoboHelp at monkeypi.net andelsewherehas been fun, but if you want a detailed overview of the new features with minimal snark, take a look at Rob’s article. – posted by Sarah @ 11:58 AM |
hope for the next release of FrameMaker, due sometime this year (though hope stubbornly refuses to die). And there’s more. The Palimpsest blog (from Scriptorium) has posted about it, and links to another post, on the I’d Rather Be Writing blog called10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to RoboHelp 6. I should say that I’m not a fan of RoboHelp. I haven’t used it since I left Solect in 1999, after which I became a committed and more or less happy WebWorks Publisher user. If I had to use something other than WebWorks, I’d probably look at Madcap’s
Tom,
Sharp analysis. I appreciate the dissenting voice towards the industry standard tool. With the change in our industry towards separating content from format, one would think Adobe would lean more in the direction of industry trends rather than stagnating in the old-school help authoring techniques.
Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
I got tired of waiting and switched to Doc-To-Help. The conversion utility from Robohelp projects worked great. The product supports Vista and Word 2007.
It took a while for ComponentOne to put their act together but they did a great job. I highly recommend it. Once you buy the product, you get complementary updates for a year. They have been releasing three updates a year.
Dan and Robert,
Thanks for your comments. I’m glad to hear Doc-To-Help doesn’t have the same Vista and Word 2007 problems as RoboHelp, but how does it measure against the other items I listed (e.g., cross references)?
Once SocialText will allow to select pages and wrap them into a CHM/PDF, I am their for the next 2-3 years.
Has anyone heard anything about the server component of RoboHelp 6 being ‘downgraded’ and the search functionality removed?
There’s a discussion starting about this over on the MonkeyPi site:
http://monkeypi.net/?p=150
[...] I’d Rather Be Writing » 10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Robohelp 6 (08:44:44) : [...]
I have not heard of that. You might try asking it on the RoboHelp blog or forums. The RoboHelp blog is at http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm.
MonkeyPI really ignited with the RoboHelp discussion. Has the writer unveiled him/herself yet? Just curious.
My company has several licenses of RoboHelp x5. We need to buy another license for a new TW and it will probably have to be RoboHelp 6. Does anyone know if RoboHelp 5 can work with source files generated by RoboHelp 6?
Thanks,
Mark
[...] whether or not to upgrade. So they google RoboHelp 6. Result 7 on the first page is my post on 10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to RoboHelp 6. Result 8 on the first page is my Tech Writer Voices podcast on RoboHelp. And result 9 on the first [...]
[...] 10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Robohelp 6 Although I currently use RoboHelp 5, because it?s the software my department still has (or is stuck with, due to legacy content, training issues, upgrade costs, flux of tech comm tool market, etc.), I can think of at least 10 good … Related: • 10 • Reasons • Not • to • Upgrade • to • Robohelp • 6 [...]
tom, how long you been working at Madcap?
I neither work for Madcap nor do I use Flare.
Nice. I love how anybody who is critical of Robohelp is automatically assumed to be a Flare zealot or employee.
No where does Tom mention that you should use a different specific authoring tool. Instead, he is warning RH 5 users of 10 reasons not to upgrade to RH 6. Until some of his basic questions or problems are answered, this is sound advice.
If you are in the market for a new HAT, you should carefully consider these 10 things before you upgrade or purchase RH 6. You should also carefully consider the flaws/problems with other HATs before you invest in them. As a Flare user, I’ll be the first to warn you of some critical problems with Flare that I think new users should be aware of before they get too entrenched in the process of creating help with Flare. That doesn’t make me a Flare hater, or an Adobe employee. I’m neither.
It is possible to be critical of Robohelp, and not be a MadCap employee. It’s also possible to be critical of Flare and not be an Adobe employee.
Sometimes it is nice for a third-party to post an honest evaluation of the product, which I think this post was.
Paul,
“’ll be the first to warn you of some critical problems with Flare that I think new users should be aware of before they get too entrenched in the process of creating help with Flare.”
I’ve only dabbled in Flare for a couple weeks of experimentation. I’m sure (like buying a car or house) you don’t get to know the quirks and problems until it’s too late.
Do you mind sharing what some of these critical problems are? Or if you blogged about it already, just point me to the post.
Tom
I thought you’d probably ask this question. I’ve been contemplating this post for a while.
When I get it posted to my blog, I’ll re-comment here with a link.
[...] Tom Johnson’s blog, I’d Rather Be Writing. A couple of months ago, Tom posted a list of ten reasons not to upgrade to Adobe’s Robohelp 6. (RH 6 is a help authoring tool (HAT); for those of you who aren’t technical writers, a HAT [...]
Here is the post:
“Six Persistent Flare Problems” at Technically Speaking
I am new to Help Authoring. I started with the free Microsoft HTML workshop which would be sufficient if it worked. For instance it does not build the index from the HTML “keyword” tag words in the HTML as it says it will if you click the box before compiling.
After I figured out the control file structures I started just putting my structure data (TOC, index, etc) directly into the non-HTML files using Notepad. As an old assembly language programmer I can not put data into little fields on windows and clicking OK over and over again.
In the ads for Robohelp they tout importing MS Word documents. When I save an MS word document as HTML I get an ungodly amount of unnecessary formatting information in the HTML file. I can not ship an HTML file with all that crap even though no one else will ever see it. So I “wash” the MS Word text and paste the cleansed characters into an HTML file using MS Frontpage. I get nice clean, tight HTML, the way God intended.
Those who have been doing HTML Help Authoring for years probably are laughing now. That’s to be expected. OBTW: I have the $1000 that it would cost for Robhelp to spend on other things.
I’ve been researching the Corporate Authenticity angle on RoboHelp over at my blog. The latest article, Is RoboHelp Dead… Again? has generated quite a buzz on the HATT list.
http://charlesjeter.com/2007/08/31/is-robohelp-dead-again/
The initial subject I had been looking into was the Technical Support layoffs Adobe had in June with their core RoboHelp team. That’s pretty much buried now but it’s a compelling story I’ll detail further as I get time.
http://charlesjeter.com/category/technical-support/
Tom, I’d love it if you had a chance to review the articles and if I’m lucky, review them on your blog!
Great work by the way.
Sincerely,
Charles Jeter
[...] may be in the works for sure. …labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/ adobe-robohelp-6-is-now-available.html10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Robohelp 6 | I'd Rather Be WritingRoboHelp isn’t compatible with Word 2007 (nor with Vista), so when Vista and Office 2007 become [...]
[...] 10 Reasons Not to Upgrade to Robohelp 6 [...]