Talk:RoboHelp

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[edit] Speculation about RoboHelp's future

It appears that a few users have been going back and forth between adding and removing text about Macromedia ceasing development work on RoboHelp. First of all, Adobe now owns Macromedia. The "official" status of RoboHelp is that it is still sold and supported by Macromedia. Everything else is hearsay, because Adobe has not made any official announcement as to the status or future of RoboHelp. I do think the speculation should be mentioned in the article, as long as it is clear that it is not FACT. Aguerriero 20:10, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Aguerriero. I'm from Earth, which planet do you come from? Nobody denies that Macromedia still "sells and supports" RoboHelp (in other words, they continue to extract $$$ from it as long as this is feasible). But in how far is it still being actively developed? That is, will RoboHelp adapt to future developments from outside Macromedia, or will it just slouch along in a zombielike state until it's too outdated to generate any reasonable amount of $$$ for MM?

Seriously, I am not denying that RoboHelp is still serving a useful purpose to a large customer base. But if development has been halted, that usefulness will obviously decrease over time as new ways of doing Online Help come around (like the Help system of Windows Vista, to name just one) that will just not be supported by RoboHelp. Maybe you or marketing droids like Miriam Geller (can't tell whether she is foolish or just thinks her audience is) don't care about such nasty details, but tech writers that consider investing substantial amounts of work into RoboHelp projects actually do.

As for the hearsay, it's interesting to note that a substantial amount of said hearsay (see the links in the article) comes from former RoboHelp developers themselves (there aren't many active RoboHelp developers left, obviously), one of them actually being the former RoboHelp Product Manager. Read it for yourself and decide whether this is relevant or not. The term "Dilbertesque circle-speak" excellently describes the gibberish found in Miriam Geller's post, "double speak" would have been another possibility IMHO. I won't even accuse her of lying because she just managed to say nothing of relevance. And it is, to all but the gullible, anything but a committment!

You can interpret this in any way you like, but if I asked a woman to marry me and all she said was "You're certainly a nice person and I would love it if we could remain friends", I don't think it would be daring to interpret that as a long-winded way of saying "No!" YMMV and HAND. Aragorn2 22:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry but what is your point? That hearsay belongs in the article? Wikipedia requires that things be verifiable by a non-trivial citation. If you have proof that they have ceased to develop RoboHelp, then by all means post it. Newsgroups, mailing lists, and blogs are not acceptable sources. But you simply cannot say "Macromedia has stopped developing RoboHelp" without a citation. For as many rumors I've heard that they stopped working on it, I've just the same number of rumors that they are.

Incidentally, I don't work for Macromedia or any other software company that makes HATs. I work in the industry, that's it. Mind the personal attacks, please, and post a verifiable citation if you have one. --Aguerriero (talk) 22:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I must agree with this comment. There seems to be a lot of discussion about the future of this product rather than its usage in the market. It is still the lead help authoring tool on the market and continues to be used on a daily basis by thousands of technical authors. This speculation is unhealty and very unwelcome. Hopefully people can spend their time constructively discussing the usage of this product rather than trying to damage Adobe's reputation. The product remains robust and allows help authors to deliver projects efficiently and quickly. What keeps it one notch above other help authoring tools is the easy of use. You can quickly produce HTML Help, Browser Based Help and the unique Flashhelp output. This product still has a very credible future, particulary now it is in the hands of Adobe.