RoboHelp Office X5

Editorial Review:

ROBOHELP OFFICE X5

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0

Manages Straight Help Files Just Fine..:

I've been working with the X5 version now for six months. What it does really well is manage a great many files for various outputs, htm, chm, flash. It's pdf output is rather pathetic, though. I end up printing to WORD and then editing from there. If you use Robohelp to print to PDF, you lose all links in the document.
where it is extremely buggy is in version control. We're using RCS system, and so far my 1600 + help system has crashed twice.. with no apparent reason. This last time it just divorced... more info

Functions like a Beta release:

Want support for JavaHelp? Forget it. RoboHelp claims to support JavaHelp, but only supports some of it.
For example, I had to write a utility to "massage" the resulting JavaHelp build xml files because RoboHelp does not recognize multiple controls pointing to a single JavaHelp topic. (No, aliases do not work for JavaHelp.)
Also, neither JavaHelp 1.x nor 2.x recognizes all the formatting codes inserted by RoboHelp. For example, plain old HTML bold tags display properly; RoboHelp's bold style does... more info

Overpriced and very disappointing.:

ADDITION TO MY REVIEW: After updating an old Help project for a Java application, I learned that this version of RoboHelp automatically and without warning changes all map IDs to a different form than the older version, with NO provision in RoboHelp X5 for generating IDs in the old format. Solution: go in and manually change all the map IDs to the old format. This is INEXCUSABLE and makes upgrading from an old version of RoboHelp A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY.
And get this: If you have two topic... more info

Highway Robbery:

This is nothing more than the basic RoboHelp with many more bells and whistles. It's not worth a grand; not now, not ever.

Reminds me of automobiles: they're all the same, four wheels and a horn. They all do the same thing. But start adding features and the price starts climbing.

I think it's the height of arrogance to charge a grand for this software. Just so long as this type of arrogance marks the software industry, then just so long will I in my secret heart cheer on the software pirates.

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