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Volume 24, Number 8
April 2008
Printable

FEATURE: Frame and RoboHelp Are NOT
Dead or Technical Communication Gets Its
Due from Adobe at Last

by Mike Hiatt, LSC Senior Member

FrameMaker and RoboHelp have been rumored to be on their death beds for years, and you would think that Adobe’s announcement last fall of the Technical Communication Suite that includes FrameMaker, Acrobat 3D, RoboHelp, and Captivate would have finally laid those rumors to rest.

Not so, apparently.

I attended the FrameMaker Chatauqua training put on by BrightPath Solutions in Raleigh, N.C. in mid-February, where R.J. Jacquez, a self-described FrameMaker evangelist and now the Technical Communication Suite evangelist, delivered the keynote address. In beginning his talk, he stressed his belief that this new software suite shows Adobe’s commitment to both FrameMaker and RoboHelp. Which prompted someone in the audience to report that they had seen a post on the FrameMaker User Group the week before asking if Adobe was abandoning development of FrameMaker.

There were many interesting sessions, and I got to meet other FrameMaker users, including some from other parts of Texas. I thought LSC members might be most interested in the keynote address and the FrameMaker 8 session.

Adobe in Technical Communication and
Instructional Design (Keynote Session)

The keynote speech focused on Adobe’s continuing support of technical communicators for both traditional technical writing and instructional design with FrameMaker and Acrobat, as well as moving forward into the future with the new suite to provide the ability to meet the changing demands of technical communication and instruction in today’s world.

Key trends that Jacquez cited as providing impetus for the creation of this suite were:

  • Animation in documentation: We live in an increasingly visual world where people are, increasingly, not readers, but viewers. Animation engages them and provides access to content for those who learn differently. It can also overcome language barriers to some extent by showing rather than telling.
  • Rich media: Demos, simulat ions, and “show-me” movies are part of the package for the future. (Captivate, which lets user’s create demos, simulations, and eLearning including tests, is one of the fastest growing products in Adobe’s portfolio, according to Jacquez.)
  • 3D illustrations: 3D illustrations with their ability to be rotated and exploded to expose more information are needed as documentation becomes increasingly globalized and visually oriented.

Jacquez pointed to the convergence of various document types as the future of documentation.

As part of this convergence of document types, increasing globalization, and expanding demand for visual information instead of or besides text, he talked about using “Show-me” movies in help files, information systems, and knowledge bases, as well as inside PDF technical manuals and training. Using Captivate to create these as Flash movies, there is no need to launch a browser window or player to view them.

Two interesting statistics Jacquez gave were:

  • 94% of all PCs have Adobe Reader installed
  • 98% of a ll PCs have the Flash player installed

Jacquez said the decision to add Acrobat 3D to the suite was driven by design engineering challenges related to trying to present 3D drawings in 2D. The solution, he said, was to add 3D support to PDF and then include the 3D PDF capabilities in the suite.

He compared the new suite to Creative Suite stating that once the company created Creative Suite for the graphics arts professionals and saw the reception it got, it was an easier sell for creating the Technical Communication Suite. Jacquez said that the new suite is a result of Adobe understanding what to do with the products they acquired in the purchase of Macromedia and using those products to provide the products most commonly used by technical communicators according to their research.

He added that he felt while the Technical Communication Suite was a good start and covered most areas needed by technical communicators based on their research, he could see the possibility that additions would be made to the suite, similar to the additions that have been made to Creative Suite over time.

He said that the new suite was not just a collection of products on the same CD provided at a bundled price. Jacquez said that buying the suite provides integrations of the products that are not available by buying the four products individually. For example, from within FrameMaker or RoboHelp, you can decide you need to include a Captivate movie of some sort (a “Show-me” film or software feature demo). You can launch Captivate from within FrameMaker or RoboHelp, create the desired Captivate object, and have it placed into the originating document without having to leave FrameMaker or RoboHelp. When the Captivate object is created and inserted, you return to the application you were using before opening Captivate.

Another example is that FrameMaker and RoboHelp (in the suite) have a live link between them that enables you to synchronize the changes made in either product with the other. This eliminates the issue of tweaking in the help tool not appearing in the source file or having to exit the help tool to open the source file to fix a problem and then regenerate the help to include the correction.

Visit http://www.adobe.com/products/technicalcommunicationsuite/ for more information about the Technical Communication Suite.

Visit www.adobe.com/go/techcom_seminars for a variety of On-Demand eSeminars on topics related to the trends R.J. talked about and how Adobe suggests you address them using its products.

FrameMaker 8.0: New and Improved, but How

Jacquez delivered this session on FrameMaker 8. He promoted FrameMaker as the bridge from static content to content laced with rich media (Captivate movies, Adobe 3D drawings, and so forth). While he said that they have revamped the user interface (UI), my take was that it has been tweaked with some obvious and some not-so-obvious changes. However, I don’t think most experienced FrameMaker users will find anything that will hinder them when making the switch. (When I eventually upgrade, I may learn otherwise, but I expect most of it will be simply learning where they moved things I regularly use.)

One of the big things was that Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) support is built into FrameMaker. It has been moved off the File menu and now has its own listing on the menu bar. Jacquez said he sees customers:
  • Doing a pilot project to move from unstructured to structured.
  • Then converting the rest of their documents to structured.
  • Doing a pilot project to move from unstructured to structured.
  • Then converting the rest of their documents to structured.
  • Doing a pilot project to move the structured documents into DITA.
  • Then converting the rest of their documents to DITA.
  • Doing a pilot project to move from DITA to XML.
  • Then converting the rest of their documents from DITA to XML.

You can visit the Adobe Web site and look at the list of new features for FrameMaker 8.

The following features that appear in the table below were pointed out during the session. Some, like Unicode support, are extremely important for support of additional languages in FrameMaker, especially Eastern European languages, and for support of more than two languages at a time in a single FrameMaker document. Others are “what took you so long” features that sometimes got applause or a group “finally.”

Feature

Description

Unicode support

  • Eastern European languages are now supported without resorting to special mappings.
  • Word documents using unicode can be opened in FrameMaker.
  • Text in dialog boxes, including style names, will now appear in the non-English language instead of cryptic symbols.
  • Search and replace can be done with the language required instead of the cryptic symbols.
  • Text converted to PDF bookmarks will appear in their language instead of as cryptic symbols.

Support for mouse scroll wheels

  • FrameMaker 8 natively supports the scroll wheels on mouse devices — finally. No more trying to find a driver that makes the scroll wheel work, but doesn’t cause other flaky mouse actions.

Track Text Edits

  • Similar to Word’s feature, but far more limited. Deleted text is red with a strikethrough while inserted text is green. No support for multiple editors with different colors of text.
  • Can accept or reject edits individually or collectively.
  • Has a preview function that lets you see how the document would look showing the inserted text with the color turned off. Exiting preview shows all the changes with their colors.

Enhanced
Conditional Text

  • Conditional text uses the the familiar interface with some additional dialogs for the new features.
  • One new feature is the “Expression Designer” which lets users create custom expressions to set rules for conditions using AND / OR / NOT rules.
  • Users can create custom colors for conditions and applying multiple conditions no longer produces magenta, but a color based on mixing the colors of the applied conditions (for example, applying conditions set to red and yellow to the same text will produce orange).

Filter bases
on attributes

  • In the structured world, users can filter based on attributes to provide more control.

XML enhancements

  • New XML templates and structured applications are included as part of FrameMaker.

Font preview

  • Font previews pop up when rolling over fonts on the Format/Font menu or in the Paragraph Style Designer.

Direct PDF
creation

  • Direct S ave to PDF and Save to PDF (send for review) options on the File menu.
  • Replaces having to select File/Save As and then pick PDF in the Save as type field and, if sending for review, having to open the file and turn on commenting.

DITA support

  • More DITA support. DITA now has its own menu bar item.

View tabbed bar

  • Provides tabs of all open documents with their file name displayed so you can file them easily when multiple files are open. Very nice!

Additional template for structured FrameMaker

  • Additional templates have been added for structured FrameMaker. The templates have been included in the Samples and More Samples dialog boxes.

Acrobat 3D support

  • My notes on this are a little unclear, but I believe it works this way:
    • FrameMaker will import a PDF created from a 3D drawing using Acrobat 3D (included in the Technical Communication Suite).
    • When a PDF is created from the FrameMaker 8 file, Acrobat can then manipulate the 3D file with all the available 3D tools to rotate the drawing, explode it, and so forth, from within Acrobat.

Support for Captivate creations

  • FrameMaker can import a Captivate creation into an anchored frame and the Captivate file will run in a PDF file created from the FrameMaker file. This may also work for other conversions from the FrameMaker file, such as ePublisher output.