
So I’ve added that option to the script as well.Īs far as publishing goes, I’ve mentioned that we use AWS. You can generate RoboHelp content through batches - very useful if your online help is structured as a master + modules project.įor that, we need to launch a command-line interpreter, such as cmd.exe, then use the following command: rhcl.exe -l -o There we have it - thumbnails to fit screenshot size Extra: Generate & Publish

Remake image thumbnails and re-check thumbnail references (RoboHelp sometimes acts out and generates incorrect references).Īnd much-much more, but this is the extent to which I optimized my workflow so far.Ĭhange the values of color and background-color properties.Change RoboHelp non-customizable icons when generating.Add a font-face if, for some reason, RoboHelp hindered you from doing so.Add a meta tag to put a timestamp on each file, making it easier to see whether your content was updated correctly while waiting for CloudFront cache to resolve.Here are some of the changes we can make with RegEx: other files - not relevant for this article.*.ttf files - for custom fonts in your output, you need them packaged and referenced.*.htm files - these represent the individual topics, transformed by RoboHelp into html files.default.css file - the default (haven’t changed the name) css file.whxdata folder - misc folder containing package data, linked topics to htm files, ToC data etc.template folder - generated by RoboHelp, it contains your output layout settings and resources (button icons, css, settings) in the following sub-folders:, images, resources, scripts, styles.Graphics folder - this folder contains sub-folders with graphics pertaining to each individual chapter, as well as icons from the app I’m documenting (anonymized).My RoboHelp output structure is the following: We can use RegEx with variables, to search for an element and replace its target href, while keeping part of the original target.įor the purpose of this article, I’ll be using Adobe RoboHelp 2019 Classic and generating a Responsive HTML5 output. We can use RegEx for more than just find and replace xyz with xYZ. RegEx? But why? As Wikipedia contributors put it, regular expressions, are sequences of characters that define a search pattern, generally used by searching algorithms for “find” or “find and replace” operations.There are other tools out there and one could make a case that they might be better but RoboHelp is my go-to HAT for online help systems. We author content as we do in Word, but HATs transform content and output entire systems or documents.


#Adobe robohelp supress meta tag software
What do technical writers do? As I like to sum it up for IT, we’re an important part of the software development cycle by conveying highly technical information into easy-to-understand documentation in various formats (manuals, guides, online/offline help systems, knowledge base and so on).You don’t have to know an awful lot to do this, just be curious enough and have master Google at the ready. If you deal with traditional documentation and you’re looking for a way to power up the look and feel of your doc set, then this is dedicated to you.

Naturally, this triggered my curiosity and led me down a road of discovery I’m still on today. As a technical writer, I’ve often had to come to terms with the fact that HATs (Help Authoring Tools) are limited in what they can offer as output.
