Reviewing Help

What's covered?

Once the help has been written, the need for it to be reviewed by subject experts and others arises. You don't want these people to open your topic in another HTML editor. They want to edit to a screen but cannot use RoboHelp.

This topic covers some options including the use of Macromedia's Contribute product. Contribute may also be suited to translation work but that is just an idea. I have not tested that and would welcome feedback from anyone who decides to try it.

My thanks to Arne Kvadsheim for posting the idea of using Contribute and his help in getting me started with it.

What are the options?

A lot depends on volume and the extent of the changes.

Use the Printed Documentation Function

You could produce a Word document via the Printed Documentation function and give that to the editors who can work in one of three ways:

  1. They can turn on tracking in Word. I think that makes it difficult for them to work in and visualise the end result. If you do use this method, it's possible you might consider importing the Word document instead of making the changes. If you do decide to do that, make sure you approve the changes first and turn of the tracking! I am assuming you are aware of the pitfalls when you import Word documents.
  2. They can just make the changes in the Word document and send it back to you. You use Word's compare function and duplicate the changes in RoboHelp.
  3. The editor enters ### everywhere they make a change with explanatory notes such as ### Delete this paragraph. ### Sentence added. Why three # symbols? Put some in a long document and then scroll through it quickly. Notice how ### jumps at you better than say ***. The recommended method has to be to use Word's Find function so that you don't miss any edits. You find the changes and make them manually in RH.

It may not be slick but you keep control of the html and the editors work with something they understand.

Use Contribute

In response to a posting on the subject of reviewing help, Arne Kvadsheim suggested the use of Macromedia's Contribute product. This is a product that allows html pages to be edited by anyone capable of using a Word processor and requires no knowledge of RoboHelp.

Click here to find out how to set things up and use Contribute.

Topic Revisions

Date

Changes to this page

04 Mar 2005

New topic.