atw: The Good Oil on RoboHelp - at AODC

Dear Austechwriters=20

There has been a lot of gossip, rumour and supposition about the fate of =
RoboHelp of late, and much of the discussion arose out of comments and =
announcements made at the WritersUA conference in Las Vegas in March.=20

Joe Welinske, the president of WritersUA, has written an article =
entitled "The Future of RoboHelp?", which explains the controversial =
goings-on since Macromedia acquired eHelp (and therefore RoboHelp) in =
2003. You can read the article at =
http://www.writersua.com/articles/rh/index.html. Joe is currently in =
Australia, and will be speaking at the AODC conference in Melbourne next =
week. (WritersUA is a co-founder of the AODC Conference.) Brian Chau, =
from Macromedia Australia, will also be presenting at AODC. In the =
Conference kit, there will be information about Madcap Software, and =
their "under-development" authoring tool called Flare. (Madcap was =
recently formed by a number of key former RoboHelp developers.) =
Consequently, if you are using (or intending to use) RoboHelp, you =
should come along to AODC and take the opportunity to grill both Joe and =
Brian about where you stand.

One of the observations in Joe's article is a change in the forthcoming =
IE 7 release, or the AOL/Netscape 8 release, or changes to other =
browsers for that matter, could "break" RoboHelp's WebHelp =
functionality. If there are no future releases or updates to RoboHelp, =
this could be a catastrophic blow for many technical writers. And of =
course, the even more recent takeover of Macromedia by Adobe introduces =
another layer of uncertainty.=20

If these industry changes are critical to you, you may also want to =
attend Matthew Ellison's pre-Conference half-day workshop next Tuesday, =
on "Authoring Tools, Workflows and Paradigms". This session focuses on =
authoring tool selection. Matthew is extremely well-informed on the =
latest authoring tool offerings and options, and tapping his knowledge =
is a great approach!

Registration for the three day conference is $1199. Pre-conference =
Workshops are $231 each. For further information, please call me on (03) =
9803 8291 or visit www.aodc.com.au

Penny Bradley

Tel: +61 (0)3 9803 8291
Fax: +61 (0)3 9884 6297
E-mail: pbradley@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.aodc.com.au/


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