Macromedia upgrades eHelp

Macromedia Inc. is capitalizing on its December acquisition of eHelp Corp. by releasing enhanced versions of two eHelp products.

RoboHelp, a tool for authoring help file documents in multiple formats, is getting three major changes, said Juliana Slye, Macromedia's director of global government industry. The new version, RoboHelp X5, includes support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), PDF and comes with the newly released JavaHelp 2.0 from Sun Microsystems Inc.

It also has:

* Content management enhancements so authors can track all document changes and see who made them. Macromedia is adding a rollback feature so a document's author can restore an earlier version if needed.

* Improved multiple author support. The system will make sure only one person at a time is able to make changes to a document.

* Improved support for industry standards, including the ability to import and export XML files. "This is going to be critical in the government," Slye said. "RoboHelp has a strong government customer base."

NASA used the system to develop help documents for 7,000 employees being trained on a new information technology system, she said.

RoboInfo is for organizations that want to publish and maintain policies and procedures online. The new version includes enhancements similar to those in RoboHelp, including detailed audit trails, a rollback capability and multiple user controls.

"The eHelp products are going to enhance our ability to address not just the transformation of the business processes, but the transformation of the agency," Slye said. "They strengthen our commitments to the marketplace and broaden them."