*Disclosure: I am one of those long time RoboHelp folks no longer with
Macromedia and now working on a new startup/tool for help authoring*

Hi Araceli,

A lot has happened for RoboHelp customers to digest over the last couple of
years. When Macromedia acquired eHelp in late 2003 we all had high hopes
about the future of RoboHelp. But then, under Macromedia stewardship, many
decisions were made that infuriated customers.

These decisions ranged from changes in day to day operations to actually
killing products like RoboPresenter and RoboHelp for FrameMaker. Then, as
documented on several public lists, the RoboHelp development team was let
go, first a large group last October, and the remainder just recently. What
this means to the future of RoboHelp only Macromedia can say, and they seem
unwilling to make any kind of meaningful public commitment to any kind of
future development or release schedule. The only quasi-official announcement
they have made was to the Macromedia run RoboHelp forums and I heard someone
at the WritersUA conference describe that announcement as, "Corporate,
Dilbertesque, circle speak".

Last October I made a post on one of the public forums that as long as I
felt that RoboHelp had a future, I wasn't going anywhere. Well, I had no
desire to eat those words so on March 4, after the second RoboHelp team
layoff was announced, I left Macromedia. This was an extremely difficult
decision for me. I have been the product manager for RoboHelp for so long
that I couldn't imagine not being associated with it anymore, but then
again, with all of the changes I couldn't imagine staying any longer either.

Since then I have partnered with Bjorn (who wrote the HTML editor that is
the core of RoboHelp) and several other former eHelp/Blue Sky Software folks
to form MadCap Software. I'm not going into any detail (we will be buying ad
space from Lisa for that!), but there is plenty of information on our web
site.

I hope that this information helps,

Mike Hamilton
VP Product Management
MadCap Software
mhamil...@madcapsoftware.com
http://www.madcapsoftware.com