Month: July 2010

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Adobe RoboHelp 8: The Pros Have It, The Others Don’t

by Kevin Siegel

During my RoboHelp class, students are introduced to the concept of generating a layout via the Single Source Layouts pod (View > Pods > Single Source Layouts) pretty early.

The pod, which appears below, contains a handful of layouts (output files) that can be generated one at a time or in a batch.

RoboHelp layouts

The type of layout you choose depends on your audience. For instance, you would choose Adobe AIR to generate Help as an Adobe AIR application, browser-based Help (with the theme and skin of an Adobe AIR application), or as a packaged data file that can be viewed in an AIR Help viewer. Adobe AIR is a cross-platform format for building and deploying applications that connect the desktop to the web.

You would go with WebHelp if you wanted a web-based or desktop Help on any browser and platform. WebHelp supports standard Help features and provides customizing capabilities.

And you would generate FlashHelp if you were worried about DHTML limitations for browsers and platforms and high-security firewall issues. Although FlashHelp is arguably the slickest-looking of the outputs, your customers would need to have the Flash Player 8 or later and a web browser to view the Help system. In addition, FlashHelp isn't as easily customized as WebHelp.

So there you have it… I've given you the basic information you need to understand the layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod. See ya…

What's that you say? I forgot the Pro layouts? Oh, sorry about that. As I teach my RoboHelp students about the big three layouts on the Single Source Layouts pod (WebHelp, FlashHelp and Adobe AIR), the two Pro layouts almost always get the short end of the stick. It's not that the Pro layouts aren't cool, they are. It's just that many RoboHelp developers don't have the one, key component required to take advantage of either Pro layout.

But I digress. First let me explain what the two Pro layouts are. WebHelp Pro and FlashHelp Pro deliver server-based output. The advantage of server-based output?

  • Increased speed: The Contents, Index, and Search tabs appear more quickly.
  • Usage information: Collect feedback painlessly from readers by analyzing their traffic patterns and search behavior.
  • Runtime project merging: As a Help author, you can easily merge multiple projects at runtime. This is the perfect workflow if you are working with multiple authors, each working on a different part of the Help system and you want to combine everything as one larger project.
  • Better Search: Provides a powerful search engine to produce better results.

So the Pro layouts sound great, better than either FlashHelp or WebHelp for sure (I'll discuss the merits of Adobe AIR in a future article). So what's the catch to using the Pro layouts? Just one, but it's a biggie. You will need to own, install and manage Adobe RoboHelp Server before you will be able to publish either Pro layout to a server.

RoboHelp Server? Simply put, RoboHelp Server is an option–purchased independently of RoboHelp–that adds the capabilities mentioned above to your Help system.

In the image below you will see the workflow that incorporates RoboHelp Server.

RoboServer Workflow

Image Source: Adobe

Basically you take your RoboHelp projects, publish them to the server and BAM, you'll get the database and feedback reports that make the Pro layouts stand apart.

In today's search-centric world, I think you would be well-served to consider adding the Pro layouts and RoboHelp Server to your Help arsenal.

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Looking for learn RoboHelp quickly? I've got a two-day RoboHelp class coming up online. Click here to learn more. And if you'd like to learn how to install and use RoboHelp Server, we've got a 3-hour online class you'll be interested in. Click here for more details.

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Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kevin_siegel

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Writing & Grammar: Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers

by Jennie Ruby

Here are two modifier problems I have encountered recently. The first is a caption from a   chiropractor's ad:

"Natural approach to chronic pain and injuries located in Silver Spring."WandG2

The second is a sentence from an e-newsletter about guitars:

"Yes, Hendrix's 1965 Fender Strat that he burned at a show recently
fetched over half a million bucks at an auction."

If you giggled, or at least smiled a little, when reading these, you have discovered the inadvertent humor of these ever-popular writing errors. In the first example, it sounds like the pain and injuries are located in Silver Spring. In the second one, especially because of the line break, it sounds like the late Jimmy Hendrix gave a show recently.

Modifiers can be single adjectives or adverbs, such as recently, or they can be phrases such as located in Silver Spring. They are considered dangling when the item they are modifying is not even in the sentence. They are considered misplaced when they are not placed obviously enough near the item they are modifying. In either case, problem modifiers can be read as modifying the wrong thing in the sentence-hence the humor.

The solution to a dangling modifier is to insert the item being modified. Here is a revised caption:

Chiropractor's office located in Silver Spring offers a natural approach to chronic pain and injuries.

The solution to a misplaced modifier is to move either the modifier or the item truly being modified to lead the reader to connect the two. Here is a revised sentence:

"Yes, Hendrix's 1965 Fender Strat that he burned at a show fetched over half a million bucks at a recent auction."

The humor from dangling and misplaced modifiers is similar to the humor of a bad pun: they are groaners, not side-splitters. But that is not even the worst thing about them. The worst part is that they distract the reader from the real content of your writing, and for that reason, they are worth correcting.

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Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? If so, consider attending my Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts class. Click here to learn more. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class. You can learn about that here.

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About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.

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Acrobat: Summarizing Comments

by David R. Mankin

Acrobat files are extremely handy in a review cycle. If I have created a document in Adobe InDesign and I want you to review the file, I have three basic choices:
  1. Print the document and hand it to you.
  2. Send you the InDesign file–and hope you have InDesign (as well as the same version) and all the fonts that I used installed on your computer.
  3. Create a PDF of the document so you open and see exactly how the document is supposed to look on any computer.

It's a no-brainer. Acrobat will also allow you to utilize the Comment & Markup tool so you can place electronic post-it notes, pencil marks, boxes, circles, text edit marks, rubber stamps, etc.

For a short document, these highly graphical markup tools are fantastic. One might become overwhelmed by the large number of comments in any given PDF file (or find that in a very long document, it is difficult to get a handle of the comments).

Savvy Acrobat users know to open the Comments Panel to help manipulate and navigate through a PDF's various comments. This is very useful, but only while working with the document on screen.

Proofing and reviewing documents can be done on screen, or on paper. As much as we all want to be 'paperless,' there's no getting around it in my shop–I proof on paper. Once the PDF document is printed, I would be still be strapped to my workstation chair (to view the Comments Panel).

Here's where Acrobat's Summarize Comments command comes in to play. Choose Comments > Summarize Comments. You are presented with many options, such as physical layout, graphical vs. textual (or both), sorting criteria, etc.

Summary Options

I usually choose Comments Only to end up with a simple list of the document's comments. This summary is presented as a stand-alone PDF file and can be printed, attached, distributed, etc.

Summary results

Now I have the original document on paper, and a list of all comments on paper too. I am now free to grab a red pencil and head to a comfy spot, and start proofing on good-old paper.

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Looking to learn Acrobat quickly? Sign up for my next online Acrobat class where you'll learn a whole bunch more.


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About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.
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Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents, Part II

by Barbara Binder

Last week I talked about how to use the TOC Reference page to add the missing tab between a table of contents text entry and the page number that follows it. Here are a few more TOC tips:

  • As a general rule, don't edit the text on a generated page. All of your edits will be lost should you update the book and the file is regenerated.
  • If you want to have a title that will actually stay after you update your book, you have to ensure that the title is the first thing in the flow (titles usually are, so that's easy) and it is using a paragraph format that does not end in the suffix for the generated file. For example, TOC is the standard table of contents suffix, so you could call your contents title ContentsTitle, but not ContentsTitleTOC.
  • If you want to remove the page numbers from a top level TOC entry:
    1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
    2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
    3. Delete the building block <$pagenum> from the line with the same paragraph format as your top level TOC entry.

      Delete the building block <$pagenum />.

    4. Choose View > Body Pages.
    5. Update your book (or file).
  • If you'd like to add the chapter numbers in front of the chapter titles in your table of contents (assuming the chapter titles are numbered with the <$chapnum> variable):
    1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
    2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
    3. Type <$chapnum> and a space in front of the chapter title building block.

      Type <$chapnum /> and a space in front of the chapter title building block.

    4. Choose View > Body Pages.
    5. Update your book (or file).

When Create Hyperlinks is turned on, you can press Ctrl + Alt on your keyboard as you click on a table of contents entry to follow the hyperlink into the file. If it isn't turned on, you'll need to right-click your TOC in your book window and choose Set up Table of Contents. Then select Create Hypertext Links.

Turn on Create Hyperlinks for the TOC.

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If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

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About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.