FAR HTML: Do I really have to add all those files?
I have long been a huge fan of Helpware’s FAR HTML. I started using it many years ago to test the compilation of CHMs. Like other HATs it uses the Microsoft HTML Help compiler, but it opened another avenue to discover exactly where a problem existed with a problematic file. Most FAR HTML users use it as a find and replace tool. So do I. The ease with which it performs a function that could otherwise take hours or even days makes this a must have tool. As if that wasn’t enough, you soon realise that a lot of thought has been put into the potential issues users face and the efforts made to ease their pain.
ÜberWrite. A new HAT for a new decade.
Today is a momentous day in the evolution of help authoring tools. A new kid is on the block that will answer all our prayers. How many times have you thrown your hands up in horror and exclaimed, “If only (delete as necessary) RoboHelp / Flare / Author IT / Doc to Help could do X, my life would be so much simpler.” Well from today, your life will be more enriched and fulfillled. For one day only you can get your hands on a beta version of a new help authoring tool that may just prove to be a real challenger to the crown of “King HAT”.
According to their press release, Mumbai based software company Tata Raboomdieh have announced the arrival of their flagship product. Developed in conjunction with Berlin based entrepreneur Pöul D Uddervun and his business partner Dr. Bitt-Fischi, the product called ÜberWrite is aimed squarely at users of the established help authoring tools. Tata Raboomdieh Chief Executive Officer, Lee Vitoff, calls it, “A momentous leap forward.” He added, “We took the functionality offered by our competitors as the starting block for our development.”
Indeed the level of functionality inside ÜberWrite is quite extraordinary. It offers:
- Automatic Language Recognition:Bilingual authors no longer have to set the properties of a project, topic or piece of text to a specific language. You just type away in the language of your choice and ÜberWrite automatically recognizes the language being used. Over 250 languages are supported, including some regional ones like Glaswegian and Texan. Senior Product Evangelist Hugh Rae says, ”The in-built intelligence even caters for those occasions where the author types complete twoddle by issuing a “Hey. You could get a job as a Developer” warning. Initial testing has proved incredibly popular. Glasgow based businessman Mac McMac said, “Och! Now even those crabbity bampots in Edinburgh can te’ what we’re blathering aboot.”An additional option can also be set to automatically translate your typed input into colloquialisms better suited for regional audiences. For example type a first person reference in documentation aimed at a Manchester audience, and “Our Kid” is substituted automatically. Future releases of the product will extend this functionality to allow for use of other common localised phrases. For example, documentation with a “How do I?” section aimed at Irish users could be introduced with a “Well I wouldn’t start from there” reference.
- Update User Interface:So you’ve read the Functional Spec, interviewed the developer and tested a build. Off you go and document a dialog complete with its myriad of fields, options and buttons. You get the help reviewed and signed off. Then you install a new build only to notice a field name has changed. UUI (pronounced ewe-ee) does away with the need to check out the source, change the help and recompile. The UUI does it all for you. An added level of integration has been added to enable the UUI to be used in conjunction with the DUD utility (see below). Lead Developer Upton O’Goode said, “This product has changed my life. I no longer have to talk to anyone. I can just lock myself away in a cupboard surfacing only when I have run out of Coke and Doritos.”
- Detect Useless Developers (DUD):How many times have you installed the latest test build in order to start documenting a feature only to discover that the application crashes whenever you try to use it? Now with ÜberWrite’s DUD facility you can get your own back. Just use the DUD tool to insert a script into the topic’s code. When the topic is displayed, the script activates electrodes linked to the Developer’s keyboard issuing a mild electric shock.
Note: This utility must not be confused with the Detect Idiotic Developer (DID) that corrects context sensitive help calls that have been coded to call the incorrect help topic even though you have given precise written instructions of what to use.
- Overcomplicated Dialog Decompiler (ODD):Designed to make sense of that 50 field dialog with so many permutations of mandatory fields depending on what other fields have been completed, that it would give Albert Einstein a headache. This utility also comes into its own for those 21 step wizards designed to “simply and easily perform that everyday function”.
- Nervous Breakdown utility:Designed for those “How do you expect me to handle this” moments when little thought has been given to how you will deliver help for the given functionality. For example a dialog with a help button that is reused throughout the application but in certain instances acts differently on a myriad of different scenarios.
To download your beta version click here. Alternatively contact Üve Beenhãd at Tata Raboomdieh Marketing Department stating the date at the top of this post.
Flare to RoboHelp Converter
Much has been written about the history of RoboHelp. Part of that must be the start up of Madcap Software and the addition of Flare to the help authoring tool pool. Following the release of Flare, there were some RoboHelp users who jumped ship. Whilst I held faith in RoboHelp, I can understand why some users wanted not to even if I didn’t agree with their reasoning.
One of the big selling points of early Flare releases was its ability to import RoboHelp projects and (according to the marketing hype) virtually seamlessly convert them to the XML required by Flare. This was backed up by an aggressive marketing campaign with reduced license rates for existing RoboHelp users. That’s all water under the bridge for most of us. We have made our bed and laid in it wherever that may have been.
For users that did migrate to Flare, the experience may not have been as fruitful as they had hoped. The early releases were limited in functionality and had bugs that rendered it unusable to some. Whilst Madcap played catch up to Macromedia and Adobe in the functionality provided by their product suite, there are undoubtedly users wishing to revert back to RoboHelp. The problem was that until fairly recently there was no easy means to convert a project from Flare to RoboHelp.
That all changed with the open source converter developed by Adobe Community Expert and certified RoboHelp / Captivate instructor, John Daigle. It converts most of your Flare content (e.g. topics, CSS, dropdowns, glossary, TOC, Index, snippets, etc.) with minimal intervention. It can be downloaded from his website, and because it is open source, can be amended to suit your specific requirements. All John asks is you drop him a line.
The Technical Writer’s “Killer App”
Everyone with an opinion talks about the “killer app” that if you didn’t have use of would cause untold stress and difficulty. The sort of application that prevents lots of sleepless nights and cold sweats by solving a difficult problem with an easy solution. In my days as a Psion PDA user it was the macro shareware that allowed you to mimic the Windows Start button to gain quick and easy access to the installed application, user folders and shortcuts and other macros you had created. It was all there with a single tap with the pen. Poetry in motion!
In the world of technical writing, the competition for that one killer application is close. Macro Express is right up there with its ability to (amongst other things) capture keystrokes and save them in a macro. So is DotColor for converting any on-screen color into a hex or RGB value. But for me, a find and replace tool just pips these to the title.
RoboHelp has a built in utility, available in the Tools pod, called Multi-File Find and Replace. This simple to use tool does a pretty good stab at the job in hand but has limitations. For a start it only searches .HTM and .TXT files. Additionally it works by searching the HTML, or XHTML/XML in the case of RoboHelp 8, and has difficulty with text strings spread across multiple lines. Anyone who has seen the HTML/XHTML/XML inside a file created in RoboHelp will soon realise just how big a problem this can be. For a really powerful tool, it is best to look elsewhere.
Two find and replace tools utilised by many Technical Writers are FAR, a shareware application written by Rob Chandler, and BK ReplacEm, a freeware utility developed by Bill Klein. Both fall into the category of “killer apps” with their ability to perform complicated searches (e.g. starting with, ending with, containing, not containing) across all file types. For me, FAR gets my vote as it can also be used as a help authoring tool and can be used to test and solve issues with projects created in RoboHelp. Only you can decide if it will work for you.
Single sourcing – The Holy Grail of HATs
I remember my first role as a Technical Author. The previous incumbent of the role was the Managing Director who managed to produce some very rough and ready help files on the odd Sunday afternoon. Needless to say they were pretty hopeless. He admitted as much when he interviewed me. On getting my feet under the desk I set about establishing the requirements of the tools I needed to perform the job to a higher standard than he had managed so far.
One of the criteria was that we needed to have the facility to produce Word and PDF documents from the help file source. As it turned out, this was to become less of an issue for us over time. However I set about establishing the tools that allowed me to achieve the holy grail of a Help Authoring Tool. Many promised much, yet they all failed at the final hurdle. Sure they all achieved the desired result but not at the click of a button. They all required a level of customisation after the print file was produced.
Author IT was the early contender for the crown. It still is according to many, but the fairly steep learning curve involved in its use made it less attractive. RoboHelp certainly had the ability to do what I wanted but the versions around at the time had a lot of issues with tables, bullets and DHTML. All this necessitated a fair bit of reformatting of the Word file before it could be described as presentable. Recent versions of RoboHelp have improved the process no end but there is still likely to be a little customisation required.
The real issue here is that there really is no sure fire single source tool an there probably never will be. Think of it as taking the engine from a Corvette and sticking it into a Ford Fiesta. Yes you could probably do it but you’d have to perform a fair bit of work to achieve the required result. Likewise taking the HTML code from RoboHelp and outputting to Word has certain undesirable results. Before you blame this on RoboHelp, try saving a Word file as HTML and look at the propriety code generated in the process. Compare this to the HTML generated by RoboHelp as you will start to see that they are chalk and cheese.
No doubt someone, somewhere will create a truely single source solution one day. When they do, they will almost certainly gain the upper hand. Until this day, people like me just have to accept that producing multiple outputs from the same source involves some additional work.
