Gridlines

Author-it Software Corporation has released updates for Author-it, Author-it Live, and Author-it Service Manager. Included are key updates to authoring, publishing, and importing (RoboHelp).

In addition, Author-it has released a Best Practice Guide for embedded topics.

Read the press release.

Four communication and information sciences Masters students from Radboud University in the Netherlands are researching user experiences with Help authoring tools (specifically: Author-it, Flare, Doc-To-Help, Help & Manual, and RoboHelp).

They have created a survey to gain more insight in user-friendliness of functionality and overall user experiences. With the results, they plan to:

• Write an article.
• Create a matrix showing a clear overview of functionalities and associated user-friendliness score.
• Write a more practical report with recommendations.

It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete the one-page, 60-question survey. If you would like a copy of the results, you can enter your email address. You can also volunteer to participate in a short phone interview regarding the results.

The students are aware that the results are not scientific, but your help is appreciated in giving them solid data that they can analyze.

Take the survey.

If you have any comments or questions, post them here. We will do our best to get the answers.

We’ve just finished updating HAT-Matrix.com with the latest features added to Author-it 5.1.

Let us know if you think we missed something for Author-it 5.1 or for any other application.

Technical communicators and Help authors from across the country gathered at the DocTrain East Conference in Burlington, MA, this week for sessions on DITA, simplified English, APIs and SDKs, along with tool presentations by the vendors.

The major tool announcement this week was MadCap’s DITA roadmap. Phase 1, due out in Q1 2009, will let users import and export DITA XML files. Phases 2 and 3 add more functionality, including support for the DITA schema. MadCap’s DITA support lets technical communicators create DITA XML files but saves them from having to use the DITA Toolkit to publish (transform) the output.

Author-it Software Corporation will release Author-it 5.2 in December, with support for structured authoring and DITA 1.1. Author-it was the first authoring tool to support DITA by means of custom topic templates that published DITA XML files.

Adobe demonstrated some of the new features in Acrobat 9 and, while very little could be announced, expect to see the next version of RoboHelp sometime around Q2 2009.

And with more DITA news, Robert Anderson from IBM said that DITA 1.2 is currently in review and should also be available during Q2 2009.

For more information (and to see the slide decks from the presentations), visit the DocTrain East 2008 website.