RoboHELP Help-to-HTML Converter and Plug-In 1.0 News & Views Software Review

by Jack Bellis Technical Writer and Multimedia Author Integrated Systems Consulting Group (Wayne, Pennsylvania) Originally published in News & Views November, 1996 issue. Copyright 1996 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

One of the most important problems facing today’s technical writers is the many output formats in which we must present our work, and the duplication of effort this causes. Blue Sky Software has delivered a powerful solution to what some refer to as the "single source" goal of producing both help and HTML: their Help-to-HTML converter and plug-in for RoboHELP. The basic idea behind Help-to-HTML is that any help file, even a completed .HLP file from another vendor, can be converted into a series of web pages with the existing links and graphics working as they did in the help file . . . as much as possible. And it definitely works. I converted several help files into web pages in minutes. It works! First I converted a fairly large, finished help file: 2 meg of text, 300 graphics, and 700 links. On my 100 MHz system, it converted in less than 30 seconds. The system prompts you with two simple wizards and pumps out usable results with no configuration tuning or setup steps. It converts every topic to a web page, with graphics. If you have a CNT page, it converts this as a list of indented links, which you can use as a home page. Segmented hotspot graphics do convert, but only to the CERN format that must be put on a web server. An upcoming Help-to-HTML version will support an easier method called Client-side Image Maps, which maintain all of the link information right in your HTML file. You can use Help-to-HTML as a standalone program (the Converter) or from the RoboHELP dialogs that are integrated into MS Word 7 under Windows 95 (the Plug-In). A few exceptions In my first pass through, I found only a few trivial problems: mid-topic links didn’t seem to get converted, and one link just didn’t work. I also found that if I specified a graphics subdirectory, it installed DOS-style backslashes, instead of UNIX-style forward slashes. Oops. I used this as a chance to test Blue Sky’s tech support line -- they answered in 14 minutes, not as bad as some. It turns out that the mid-topic links probably are not supported yet, but my experience with Blue Sky tells me that all of these are quirks of the advance release I was using, that will be resolved easily There are, however, several features of your help files that simply are not convertible, because many help functions don’t have a corresponding function in HTML. Although some of the functions that we do with help macros have equivalents, none of the macros are converted. I also found some situations, such as line breaks and indents, that are not as they appear in the help file. If you really intend to create a single-source process, you will have to fine tune your templates and methods so that you only use techniques conducive to both outputs. Check it out For my next test, I converted a conventional book that was previously formatted only for paper. The 150-page book took me about 1/2 hour to massage into a rough help file, using RoboHELP’s conversion function, and then converted to web pages in 30 seconds. This used the Plug-In, which appears simply as a button on RoboHELP's status dialog. You can see my sample results at http://www.netaxs.com/people/jbellis/example.htm. I inserted a graphic and introductory text in front of the contents links that the plug-in created from the CNT file, but I left the rest of the document untouched, so you can see some of the formatting issues. True to the form that has earned RoboHELP a good name among help authors, I give Help-to-HTML excellent marks for usability: most data persisted when I repeated processes; it never faltered when I made minor transgressions (like leaving previous results files open); it enabled tasks to be completed with minimum keystrokes; and it communicated extensively on the screen, in the documentation, and in a log file. The Help-to-HTML tool is currently available as an upgrade to RoboHELP at $199, a price at which it will more than pay for itself in one or two uses. More information on full packages is available on the web at http://www.blue-sky.com/hlp2html.htm. Where do we go from here? Help-to-HTML is an interim solution that is being supplanted as we speak . . . the "powers that be" are instituting HTML itself as the inherent format for Help, instead of RTF. In a matter of months, it’s possible that Word itself will "export" web pages directly, but I’m betting that help authors will still benefit greatly by add-ons from companies like Blue Sky, filling in many missing pieces in the knowledge transfer process.

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Last updated: November 29, 1996 (rst)