By Tom Burns
Many technical communicators who have used RoboHelp professionally are familiar with this tale of woe. The popular help-authoring program used by many technical communicators, had passed through multiple owners. When Adobe bought Macromedia, Robohelp appeared at first to languish and continue its downward spiral. Over the past couple of years, many long-term users had considered the package dead were looking at alternative solutions.
At the STC Summit in May, I was pleasantly surprised to see an enormous Adobe presence. They were heavily promoting revitalized versions of Robohelp and Framemaker from a large conference floor booth. They were also handing out freebies. In fact, as a participant in a poster contest, I received a copy of both pieces of this expensive software from Adobe Product Manager, Michael Hu. When early in October Adobe announced the release of their new Technical Communication Suite, a product that includes Robohelp and Framemaker, I took advantage of this encounter and emailed Mr. Hu several questions about this new offering. He graciously replied with the following detailed answers.
TB:
Adobe has made several announcements over the past few days concerning
the Technical Communication Suite. Can you provide some details about
Adobe’s plan for marketing to technical communicators?
MH:
I think the question is not what we are doing to market technical communicators but what are we doing to deliver solutions for technical communicators. We spent most of our company resources in the past years driving the now very successful Acrobat and Creative Suite businesses. A few years ago years Adobe started an initiative to adjust its investments across our entire portfolio of products. It was now time to go back and work on our portfolio for Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers. After the Macromedia acquisition, Adobe was now in a unique position to create a complete portfolio of products and technologies for Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers. We launched several initiatives like the Adobe FrameMaker DITA Application Pack and launched a series of new products in rapid succession to show the industry we were serious. Adobe Captivate (a leading tool in software simulation and creation of interactive instructional content) 2 in Q4 2006, Adobe RoboHelp 6 RoboHelp (the leading tool in Help authoring and publishing) in Q1 2007, Acrobat 3D Version 8 (the defacto format for delivering technical documents electronically) in Q2 2007, just recently in Q3 2007 we launched FrameMaker 8 (the leading tool to author and publish technical documentation) and another release of Captivate 3 in July. You can see the rapid evolution of our portfolio over the past year. Now Adobe now is reaching another major milestone with launch of the much anticipated RoboHelp 7 and the new Adobe Technical Communication Suite.
TB:
Do you have a vision for the technical communicator of the future? What
type of software do you see us using ten years from now?
MH:
So many things that are happening in the industry will benefit the users of our products and the final customer… the end user. It is hard to figure out where to start. I’ll pick one trend like “Convergence”
The first one is Convergence. New technologies and new demands on content are driving changes in how content is authored and delivered. Traditionally, roles in the technical communications process were distinct and separate.
Subject matter experts (typically engineers) would draft out content and suggest edits using the tools they had to hand - pen & paper, email and word processors.
Technical writers producing user manuals, etc., would work with the subject matter experts, and import content from them or create it from scratch. Their tools would normally be dedicated to their workflow - tools like FrameMaker.
Often a separate set of technical writers would work on the embedded Help content, using tools designed for their purposes, such as RoboHelp. Even if those writers were the same as those producing the other technical documents, they would often be using different tools and they would not be sharing much content between their various authoring environments.
And finally the training or eLearning department would take input from both the subject matter experts and the tech writers, and they would use tools designed for their purposes, such as PowerPoint or Captivate.
These boundaries and work processes are rapidly breaking down. With tools like FrameMaker, it becomes more efficient for subject matter experts to use the same tools as the technical writers and eliminate trans-coding costs. This is especially the case if XML is being introduced end-to-end. Alternatively PDF-based review and markup is a lot more efficient than the paper-based alternative. The bottom line is that the tools and types of output produced by the subject matter experts and the technical writers are become more and more alike.
The costs of producing Help content, training content, and user documentation can be reduced if they are both produced from a single source. Especially if the content can be carefully structured (using XML) to enable variations in Help and documentation to be handled automatically. In cases where software development is moving from desktop to the web (and where the “application” is as much about the content as the features), it can make sense for subject matter experts to use RoboHelp to directly contribute content. So we’re seeing both the user communities and the tools sets used begin to converge between the Help producers and the document producers.
To produce engaging, interactive and dynamic content, the training team (now often referred to as “eLearning”) started off using specialist tools that you didn’t see outside of their department. But as content from the other increasing user communities is delivered electronically, and as a ubiquitous platform for delivering that content has been established (i.e. Flash), we’ve seen those specialist tools that become available being adopted by the other technical communicators. For example, “how to” demonstrations developed with Captivate are being added to Help content. Meanwhile the drive to reduce costs is forcing the eLearning department to look hard at reusing content, rather than rewriting it for their own presentation.
The takeaway is that the tools used by distinct user communities are becoming more and more alike hence the creation of the Technical Communication Suite.
TB:
How much longer do you see RoboHelp as part of the Technical
Communication Suite? Will that program be around in 5 years?
MH:
For many years to come. It is a major pillar in our Technical Communication portfolio and we have significant investment in this product. In the near future you will see RoboHelp and the Tech Comm Suite play an integral role supporting other Adobe initiatives.
TB:
Will the new version of RoboHelp support the 3D PDF format?
MH:
A RoboHelp created help system will be able to support PDFs with live 3D models. In the near term, companies that use a lot of 3D will benefit from this but we also see our support for 3D proliferating into the use of 3D in other customer segments.
TB
RoboHelp is easy to use but includes an odd mixture of technology. Will
you be revamping the basic code?
MH:
We already started revamping the code with the previous version of RoboHelp 6 and started incorporating Adobe’s DNA into the product.
TB:
Why should someone choose Framemaker over Indesign?
How is Framemaker positioned? What type of future do you see for
FrameMaker? How would distinguish Framemaker from Indesign?
MH:
Both products are geared for entirely different markets. Simply put if you create technical information or instructional type of content that may or may not be complex in nature, have a need to single source, reuse content, publish information in different formats for different devices and have a need to create XML you should use FrameMaker. If you are creating something that is more design intensive like a print advertisement that does not have a requirement to constantly repurpose content you should use InDesign. FrameMaker is here to stay, Adobe uses it to create all of their product help.
TB:
Do you see online manuals with live 3D models becoming popular?
MH:
Yes especially for those in manufacturing and already using 3D. That is why we created Acrobat 3D and added support for the format in FrameMaker and in the Tech Comm Suite for 3D. - MH>>
TB:
The Adobe 3D PDF file seems like an awesome opportunity for Technical
Communicators. I noticed that Adobe was featuring the ability of
FrameMaker to accommodate the file format. What do you think the future holds
for Technical Communication and 3D PDF?
MH:
I think the real story is the support for Rich Media. Not just 3D but interactive Flash simulations and “show-me” movies in our technical information that really breathe life into your information. Taking traditional static content and making it more interactive. Adobe is uniquely positioned to bring technical communication to a new level. It isn’t just about the users of our products but the customers we serve and the people that digest the information we create. As I mentioned, it used to be that only the training deliverables would include video, animation or simulations. Now these types of asset are appearing directly in Help and support knowledge-bases, especially when it is easier to watch a procedure than to read about it. And as there is a trend to single-source Help and user documentation, the incorporation of rich media is making its way into traditional documentation content. Looking to the future, 3D is an asset type which has always required special viewers, separate from the mainstream tools and players. But with Acrobat 3D, live 3D models can now be delivered in PDF, which coincidentally is the most popular format for technical documentation.
