RoboGoodbye?
RoboHelp is quirky, but it accomplishes a lot. The most recent release (about 2003 I think) had a million and one upgrades that made Help authoring much less cumbersome and available in many formats. Generating a layout of a word document, flash help, web help, or HTML help was easy all from the same content.
I’d been slightly worried about RoboHelp’s future, and was unable to get information out of a contact of mine at Macromedia back in October. However, from reading a few articles today, I have learned two things:
1) RoboHelp has been might have been unofficially "sunset" by Macromedia/Adobe
and
2) The previous RoboHelp/Blue Sky/eHelp team (RoboHelp has had many incarnations in the last 13 years) has formed a new company, MadCap Software, which is very possibly the future in help authoring.
I’ve signed up for the last beta test of Madcap’s Flare software, as well as a sneak peak that gets me a $350 discount (the initial offering will be priced at $850). After I play with it, I’ll post more, but as of right now, I think it’s got a lot of potential. Even if it doesn’t replace RoboHelp and the "rumours" of the RoboDemise are false, it certainly can’t help to have a product that creates Help out of XML on hand.
The Future of RoboHelp
Is RoboHelp Going Away?
Madcap Software
