Adobe's Technical Communication Suite: My Thoughts

Today Adobe announced a new Technical Communications Suite of tools aimed at those working in technical writing and instructional design. This suite pairs up FrameMaker (v.8) with RoboHelp (v.7), and brings along with it Captivate and Acrobat 3D, making this perhaps the most complete suite of tools in a single package offering available for those developing documentation.

I'll admit, I'm both impressed at the package (the monetary deal for the payload of technology is quite appealing) and at Adobe's direct acknowledgement of the techcomm market. However, I do have some reservations about how this package is being interpreted by the market.

Adobe uses a few catch phrases to describe the relationship between FrameMaker and Robohelp. The press release describes it as an "integrated solution". This to me indicates that the two tools are indeed working together or are assimilated somehow into each other in order to create a seamless work flow. Yet in the RoboHelp 7 FAQ this relationship is described as follows:

You can import FrameMaker 8 MIF and FM files with style mapping, conditional tags, user-defined variables, and Captivate content intact.

Not quite the integration I was thinking of. But this is indeed a robust import, where (much like in WebWorks Publisher and Mif2Go) style mappings and such are used to auto-format the FrameMaker content. Of course, as with all these tools, you need to set up the mappings yourself based on your style usage. More on this import functionality in the features list:

Repurpose FrameMaker content for HTML publishing on import and use Topic Alias Markers to identify context-sensitive help.

So Adobe is clear that this is an import relationship between the two products in order to easily repurpose the FrameMaker content for online use. Fair enough. It sounds quite robust as well, on par with WebWorks Publisher from what I can read so far.

What gets me is how several (dare I say many?) people are already lofting this as a Single Source solution, when it's clear that it's not. This is a Repurposing solution (and there's nothing wrong with that). The workflow is still unidirectional; FrameMaker to RoboHelp to online output. There is no going back from RoboHelp should you make changes (which you can, since RoboHelp also remains an authoring tool) once you import the FrameMaker content.

This is where the similarities between RoboHelp and the likes of WebWorks Publisher and Mif2Go end. RoboHelp allows you the option to continue to edit content in the built-in (or external) HTML editor after import. From the FAQ:

RoboHelp 7 supports Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3; Macromedia® Dreamweaver 8 from Adobe; Microsoft FrontPage 2003; HomeSite 5.5; and Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2003, Word 2002, and Word 2000.

In essence, the pairing of FrameMaker and RoboHelp is still a repurposing solution, since once you import into RoboHelp, your FrameMaker source is not updated should you start making tweaks in RoboHelp. Some may argue that WebWorks Publisher and such tools are not single source tools either since they too import .fm and .mif files to produce output, but the reality is that these tools are not authoring tools. They are conversion filters, which take a master content set (FrameMaker) and convert that single content source to an output. Any content changes MUST happen in FrameMaker.

I'm sure I'll be getting my fair share of grief over this distinction (I've already been countered on a couple mailing lists in response to these single sourcing claims) but when you look at the model, the RoboHelp solution is still a repurposing solution.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.