Upgrading from RoboHelp

When RoboHelp development was stopped user started looking for a realistic alternative.  The HyperText Studio is that alternative!  The Hypertext Studio seamlessly imports your RoboHelp .xpj projects and is very easy to learn, reducing the time it takes to change products. 

Why shift to the HyperText Studio?

There are so many reasons to move to the HyperText Studio.  We have listed a few here:

• Open multiple topics.  In the Hypertext Studio you can open up to 8 topics at a time, making it easier to move data between topics. 
• WYSIWYG expanding regions (Dropdown and expanding regions in RoboHelp).  In the HyperText Studio there is no more guessing about how your expanding regions will appear, as you see it in the editor exactly as it will be.
• Predictive Linking. When you create a link the Hypertext Studio will try to find any topics with the same name as the selected text.  If one is found, it is selected for you, saving a massive amount of time. 
• Ease of use.  HyperText Studio is focused on making help authoring more efficient and more fun.  Because time wasted working around a tool's limitations is money wasted, Olson Software have ensured that HyperText Studio includes all the kind of timesaving functionality you are used to in your word processor.  This includes AutoCorrect, keyboard shortcuts to change case, format painter and table drawing tools.
• Expanding region links.  If you want to reuse content in multiple expanding regions, HyperText Studio makes this very easy with two window types, expanding block and expanding inline. HyperText Studio will automatically convert links to these windows into expanding regions when your project is built.
• Clean code. HyperText Studio does not create unnecessary HTML code.  This creates significantly reduced file sizes and makes code editing much easier. 
• No Code Changing.  Unlike RoboHelp, HyperText Studio will not rewrite your HTML or CSS code.
• Source editor. The color-coded HTML source code editing technology in the HyperText Studio takes editing your code to a new level.  As you add tags or attributes into the editor the HyperText Studio will help you by providing drop-down lists to help with your selection!  On-the-fly spell checking within the HTML source code editor makes it easy to ensure your topics are free of spelling errors!
• Navigation links. Linking to related topics automatically is very easy.  You can create a link which will automatically go to a related topic (parent etc...)
• Button Styles. Using cascading stylesheets all your buttons (see also links etc...) can automatically use the same consistent font and colors.
• Topic Styles.  Using topic styles, you can define content that can be used as the basis of other pages within a project. When using a topic style, authors can add content to only specific areas of a page, leaving common elements, such as navigation bars the same on all pages. Changing the original style will then change all pages that use the style!  In addition, properties such as keywords can also be applied to topic styles, giving you consistency in every area of your project.

How does HyperText Studio convert RoboHelp content?

• Convert glossary entries to Hypertext Studio topics. By using topics rather then a specific glossary you can take advantage of all of the power of HTML formatting and graphics.  You can also use Hypertext Studio's link to expanding text.  This way when you change a topic your changes are always reflected in any page referencing that topic.
• Convert popups to Hypertext Studio popups.  The Hypertext Studio has one popup type.  We use KeyHelp to provide rich popups that work just like WinHelp popups.
• Convert topic status to Hypertext Studio topic status.  These features are largely the same but the Hypertext Studio has an additional blank status which allows you to ensure that only topics which need status have status applied.
• Clean up RoboHelp code.  The Hypertext Studio has always written very clean HTML.  Our powerful clean technology is put to great use in reducing the unnecessary code in RoboHelp files.  The RoboHelp clean reduces file sizes by around 25%.
• Convert Dropdown and expanding text.  As you saw above, glossary expanding text is now converted to a link.  But dropdown and expanding text inline is converted to the Hypertext Studio expanding inline and expanding block respectively.  For help authors this is so much better.  Firstly, the code is extremely clean.  Secondly you work with expanding text in a WYSIWYG manner, no more guessing how your page is going to look!  Of course you can choose to have all drop downs open while editing, or simply CTRL click on a link to open up and edit the region. 
• Convert headers and footers to Hypertext Studio topic styles.  Topic styles are an incredibly powerful part of the Hypertext Studio, making it simple to create consistent looking pages.  RoboHelp headers and footers are converted to this format, giving you a head start on starting to use some of the Hypertext Studio's most powerful features.
• All HTML Help project files such as table of contents, index and windows are automatically converted.  The Hypertext Studio has very powerful tools for editing these items.  You will find many time saving features working in these areas.
• Conditional topics and text.  The current release of the Hypertext Studio does not support conditional topics and text, but these settings are still imported and retained.  A future update of the Hypertext Studio will provide support for these. 
• See also keywords are converted to Hypertext Studio invisible keywords.  This is a huge advantage for authoring because you no longer have to remember and type the name of a keyword, you can simply select it from a check list.  Of course because you can see the links to and from every object in the database it is also easy to find out which topics are using the keyword.
• See also and keyword buttons are converted to Hypertext Studio HTML help buttons.
• Convert fields to Hypertext Studio Fields. RoboHelp field formats are converted to the appropriate Hypertext Studio format.

What the Hypertext Studio does not convert

At this point we do not plan to import these particular items.  If they are required we will do so:

• Marquees
• Related topics objects
• Merged help files.  We don't import the list of files to merge with or the references to include another table of contents in the HHC file.
• Browse sequences
• What's this help files.
• HTML Shortcut links
• WinHelp links