Content nirvana: A state of content bliss, free from the repetitive effort and suffering associated with digital publishing and ad hoc formatting. How to get there The first step on this path is to understand where your time is currently being spent, and in particular, where you are spending time on things other than content creation…

You’ll need to do two things prior to publishing CSH with FrameMaker: Create CSH markers Create and edit a map (.h) file To publish context-sensitive Help, you need markers in your documents that FrameMaker can use to create links in your output for your developers. FrameMaker uses TopicAlias markers to store map ID information in…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 5 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. (Manual download not yet posted as of Feb 7, 2019, 1:40 pm PST) Interested in RoboHelp 2019 training? I’m running a discounted early adopter training class the week of February…

A client this week ran into a common tech comm problem: She needed to manage a document title, version number, and revision date across a number of documentation sets for her end clients. And she didn’t want to manually update these three pieces of content across dozens of manuals, and hundreds of documents. We decided…

I’ve used the icons available in the free Font Awesome font to create cool custom bullet icons for a couple of years now. It’s easy to download, and even the free version has over 1,400 high-quality icons to choose from. Setting up FontAwesome There are a number of ways to use this great resource, but…

I sent out an email yesterday to let the Tech Comm Tools community know about a position in Santa Clara, CA, and as a result got wind of another available job in Bothell, WA. Feel free to send me news of available positions for Adobe TCS writers and I’ll try to keep this list up-to-date.…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 4 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. Following is a list of the feature enhancements and fixes. Feature Enhancements Import and link FrameMaker files You can now import and link FrameMaker files (.fm, .mif, and .book) in Robohelp. You…

Adobe released the second updater for FrameMaker 2019 today. As always, you can run the updater from the FrameMaker Help menu to download this free update. Here’s a list of the enhancements in Update 2, as well as a list of bugs that should now be fixed. Check out the issues fixed in Update 1…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 3 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. Following is a list of the feature enhancements and fixes. Feature enhancements Use user-defined variables in output title You can now use variables in the title of any…

FrameMaker 2019 is now 64-bit, and has a fully revamped PDF engine and major improvements to the structured environment. I’ve updated and published the FrameMaker 2019 version of my structured authoring workbook. You can view details on my Books page, or order the book here. Here’s a more detailed list of improvements, courtesy of Adobe. FrameMaker…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 2 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. Following is a list of the feature enhancements and fixes. Feature enhancements Work with an enhanced TOC Topic titles in the Table of Contents panel now automatically sync…

Adobe released the first updater for FrameMaker 2019 today. As always, you can run the updater from the FrameMaker Help menu to download this free update. NOTE: Update 1 is also available for manual download at https://supportdownloads.adobe.com/product.jsp?product=22&platform=Windows Here’s a list of the enhancements in Update 2, as well as a list of bugs that should now…

Adobe released RoboHelp 2019 Update 1 today. Use the Help > Updates menu item in RoboHelp 2019 to update, or visit https://www.adobe.com/support/robohelp/downloads.html to download the updater manually. Following is a list of the feature enhancements and fixes. Feature enhancements Access Output and Author views in a single screen In RoboHelp 2019 release, Author and Output…

Students in my FrameMaker courses know that my favorite FrameMaker ExtendScript is Rick Quatro’s FindChangeFormatsBatch. But Rick has a few other great scripts, and since I had some Template course students asking about them this week, I figured I’d share descriptions and links for all of them in one place. Each script name is an…