RE: Help in Evaluating HATs

["Cardimon,Craig" <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+pauln=helpauthors -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+pauln=helpauthors -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf
Of Klaus Nji
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 12:24 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Help in Evaluating HATs

I've been reviewing several HATs for our company.  All of our documents
are
currently in Word, which are then converted to PDF, a very painful
process.

Before setting out to look for a HAT, we specified our minimum
requirements
as follows:

- Tool should take Word files as input with little modification required
on
the final content.
- Output formats required:  CHM and PDF, at a minimum.
- There should be support for conditional output, at the text level. We
should be able to control output text based by manipulating certain
variables or attributes.
-  Automation of the ouput building process should be supported.  It
should
be possible to write some kind of batch file, which will run every night
to
produce the output.
- One shoule be able to customize the PDF output.  At a minimum, the PDF
should have compressed bookmarks.
- Support for Modular Help, where by smaller books can be amalgamated
into
bigger books.
- Provision for automatic indexing.
- Seamless acceptance of very large Word documents.
- Good editor.
- Active online user forum.

So far, we have looked at:

- Help & Manual (H&M)
- RoboHelp Office (RH)
- DocToHelp (D2H)
- AuthorIT  (AIT)

Our opinion is as follows:

Help & Manual seems to satisfy almost all of the requirements.  However,
there are some unanswered questions:
- It seems to have limited support for automatic indexing and modular
help.

- Word documents must be in .rtf format.
- Output from imported Word documents lose all original links.  A pain
to
correct.
We liked the intuitive and user friendly interface H&M offerered.  Most
impressive was its flexible support for conditional text.

RoboHelp Office is very good as well but also had some limitations:
- Conditional text is restricted to the inclusiion and exclusion of
text.
- Automating builds does not seem to be supported, or is not well
documented.
- Importing large Word documents and creating PDFs seems clumsy.  Heck,
I
have not yet been able to successfully create a PDF document.
- Uncertainty about what Adobe will do with this product.
- Relatively quiet user forum.

DocToHelp has a very good interface but like the others has its
limitations:
- Editing source to making a change in a project variable requires one
to
open and close Word.  This is not very good.
- Modular Help is not supported for printed documents.  
- PDF output generation is new and offers very little flexibility.
- Relatively quiet user forum.

So, we are leaning towards D2H or H&M.

What has your experiences been with each product?

Thanks in advance.

>>>>>

I've been teaching myself RoboHelp HTML, in preparation for importing my
company's outdated PDF help files into RoboHelp, updating them, and then
exporting them either as PDF or HTML. RoboHelp HTML has been doing fine
by me. There's a lot to learn and it is keeping me on my toes. 

For the past couple days I've been helping out with a customized job for
a special customer. I've been importing rough drafts of help in Word
format into RoboHelp HTML and editing them. We don't have the image
captures yet! That's in someone else's lap thus far. When I'm done, I'll
be exporting the finished help as HTML files and emailing them to
another department for the final polish.

I have no real complaints with RoboHelp HTML.

-- Craig

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
delivery. Try it today! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or
printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
Web-based technology, and PDF output. http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.