Adobe also announced an upcoming version of RoboHelp (and FrameMaker) at the recent FrameMaker Chautauqua.
Rick Quatro Carmen Publishing 585-659-8267 www.frameexpert.com And to address one issue that Art did not talk about: RoboHelp is not "on its way out". The ownership of the company that publishes RoboHelp did change a couple of times (eHelp was bought by Macromedia, and then Macromedia was bought by Adobe), and along the way most of the original developers left. But this spring at the WinWriters conference, Adobe did something that is completely unprecedented for them: they publicly indicated that they were working on a new version of RoboHelp with a target release date in the first half of 2007. Whether this is too little, too late is a question for the marketplace to answer. But Adobe believes the product itself is still viable and are investing resources in it. The one thing that is (arguably) on its way out is the long-in-the-tooth Windows Help (.hlp) format. The new Vista operating system will not include the WinHelp engine, and it is still unclear whether a Vista-compatible WinHelp viewer will be available for download from Microsoft. The only flavor of application help that is officially supported on Vista is HTML Help (.chm). Vista itself has a new type of help, which is initially only available for in-house use within Microsoft and which may or may not eventually be made available to third-party application developers. My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel. Fred Ridder (fred dot ridder at intel dot com) Intel Parsippany, NJ
