RH7: PDF generation of help project...

All,

I have a user who is trying out the trial of RoboHelp 7 and
wants to know when generating PDF output, is there a way to bypass
creating a Word document and go straight to the PDF. Is Word still
utilized this way for Printed Documentation no matter if a PDF is
made or not?



Any info would be much appreciated.



Thanks,

GregRH7: PDF generation of help project...
Hi Greg. Word is used to generate the PDF and can't be
bypassed. I have seen shareware CHM to PDF shareware but I have no
idea how reliable they are. Not sure if this is any use ;-(RH7: PDF generation of help project...
Colum,

Thanks for replying. I ask this question because the RH user
I have is also evaluating the current version of Flare which
doesn't use Word to generate the PDF output. They want to avoid
Word when generating PDFs.



Would generating FrameMaker output then going to PDF bypass
Word?



Greg
I suspect that Flare does user Word behind the scenes in the
same way that RH does. Something has to amalgamate the topics
before they get PDFd.



I would check the Flare forums before being certain Word is
not used silently. I'm not saying it does use Word for definite,
just that I suspect it does.




Peter,

Thanks for writing back. I asked for the reason why they
don't want to use Word and this is what they said:



''because in our experience, Word becomes unstable after a
certain size is reached (sometimes even %26lt;100 pages if there are
a lot of graphics and screenshots). Word pagination is one of the
first to go. I'm afraid that it would be difficult or impossible to
PDF long documents. We need to test this, particularly for Word's
instability issues.''
Which reinforces the need to check what I said about how does
Flare work. I truly don't know so you need to be certain. If it
does use Word, then you need to be sure it does not have the same
issues.




You can generate manageable sections of your help into
smaller Word docs, convert to PDF, then use Acrobat Pro to
amalgamate them (or whatever term Adobe uses for this process) into
one finished product.



That was possible at least as far back as 2003, and might
render the size issue moot.





Good luck,

Leon


Leon and everyone,

Thanks for all of your suggestions and comments. The RH user
is dead set against using Word to generate the PDF. In further
research we have found that both RH7 and Flare use Word as a
go-between in generating the PDF. However, the importing of
FrameMaker files in RH7 briefly gave us hope that the problem was
solved by outputting to FrameMaker and then to PDF. Much to our
surprise we found the RH7 can
import FrameMaker files but can't
export to FrameMaker files.



The user is in a different business unit and is not held to
the use of RH. Since FrameMaker output is important to them, RH7
won't fulfill their need.



Thanks again for all of your help.



Greg Davis

Senior Technical Writer

Consona ERP
It would seem logical that Adobe will have export to
Framemaker on their plans for future releases but that doesn't help
right now.



If the content is in FrameMaker, or could be, then perhaps
the Technical Communication Suite holds an alternative solution.
That can output to the version of RH7 that comes with it. When
FrameMaker is later updated, I understand it is a simple click to
update the RH7 project.



The only other possibility, and it seems unlikely, is to
hammer the customer a bit more on their objections to Word. They
say ''because in our experience, Word becomes unstable after a
certain size is reached (sometimes even %26lt;100 pages if there are
a lot of graphics and screenshots). Word pagination is one of the
first to go. I'm afraid that it would be difficult or impossible to
PDF long documents''



Word really should not be unstable at that level and it is
not my experience, even with many screenshots. Whenever I see
comments like that, I do wonder if some more investigation would
solve the problem. I always want to get my hands on the project at
that point and try to make it fall over. Sometimes the cause can be
found. Often it is just the template used.