Did Adobe work with EHelp for their new RoboHelp for FM?

[Michele_...@adobeforums.com]

I use RoboHelp Office to create Help for my company's software products. EHelp Corporation, the manufacturer of Help authoring software, has come up with a new product, RoboHelp for Framemaker. I have downloaded the trial version. You can open .fm files from this application and generate Web Help and compiled Help files from it, too.

I am curious to know if EHelp collaborated with Adobe to produce this product, especially since Jorgen Lien, EHelp's Chairman and CEO, and Anthony Olivier, EHelp's CFO, just announced the Macromedia has purchased EHelp.

Hmmmmmm

[Se...@adobeforums.com]

1) WebWorks Publisher has been doing that for years. <http://www.webworks.com>. WWP 2003 is a fully-featured version of the (very) light add-on that ships with FrameMaker and that Adobe supports.

2) Macromedia just announced they're buying eHelp, but the RHFM development began at least a year ago.

3) Don't know for sure, but I suspect not.

4) RHFM is a better approach than any other use of traditional RoboHelp plus FrameMaker.

Cheers,

Sean

[R._Va...@adobeforums.com]

Regarding Sean's #4: Certainly the use of FrameMaker as an authoring environment solves one of eHelp's longstanding problems -- the difficulty in extracting content created in eHelp's HTML Help for re-use. Yes, you can export eHelp's HTML Help content as Word files, but I know from experience that Word is not the best exchange medium.

The question I have is why Adobe, otherwise so obssessed with authoring tools for on-line content, hasn't developed or acquired equivalent tools of its own. Yes, Quadralay's WWP works well with FrameMaker, but it is a separate product, from a separate company, with a separate price, a separate user interface, and a separate support organization. The eHelp-for-FrameMaker product is no different in this regard.

Adobe's curse, I think, is its reliance on its Postscript fonts cash cow. It has made the company in many ways complacent and unresponsive to new business opportunities...

[MHo...@adobeforums.com]

Perhaps, but let's not forget that with a two year release cycle that yields very little in terms of features, Frame continues to sell very well. Adobe really has no pressing need to invest in Frame R&D, when they can get the same return no matter what they don't do to the product. I'd be willing to bet that Frame would sell just as well today had Adobe left Frame in the same state was in when they acquired it (version 5).

[Bill_S...@adobeforums.com]

PS fonts and authoring tools aren't related. My guess as to why Adobe hasn't developed its own tools:

1. Others are doing it already, tying into FM, thus FM sales are supported with minimal extra dev allotted to another tool.

2. Adobe recognizes that a single-source authoring tool would probably benefit from much of the functionality in FM, but FM's code base is legacy and designed to really do one thing really well: print.

3. A plan for FM is probably if not already in the works, and without said plan, development of another tool is just wasted time for now. Adobe's doing funky things with FM down in India, so we'll have to wait and see what comes of that.

[R._Va...@adobeforums.com]

"PS fonts and authoring tools aren't related".

Not directly, but they are in my opinion related in the sense that Adobe's Postscript fonts cash cow enables the company's complacency. That complacency translates into the company's overly cautious approach to the authoring tools marketplace that so many of us find frustrating.

I can imagine the meeting of the Adobe strategists: "Look, my four-function calculator proves to me that it's too expensive to develop products. Besides, products have users and you know how annoying users can be. No, from where I sit developing, marketing, and supporting products, especially products that might have to compete, is just too risky. Let's just sit back and collect revenue on our fonts. We'll let other companies take the risk of developing the useful extensions our products need."

Yeah, I'm feeling a bit facetious this morning...

[Gordon_...@adobeforums.com]

I don't believe that fonts are a "cash cow" for Adobe anymore. I think Acrobat is the new cash cow.

[Se...@adobeforums.com]

Per an Adobe guy, Acrobat has recently surpassed Photoshop as the leading software revenue ... or something likt that.