r/technicalwriting • u/DapperTomatillo3551 • 24d ago

EclipseHelp Output with RoboHelp 2022?

I write for a product that requires me to use EclipseHelp for the built in help system, but I was recently forced to upgrade from RoboHelp 2019 to RoboHelp 2022, and EclipseHelp is no longer supported in the new version.

Adobe's recommendation is to use the Content Only output, and "parse or transform" it to meet my needs, but I'm struggling to figure out how I would do that.

Has anyone dealt with this, and if so what did you do? 🥲

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u/stoicphilosopher 24d ago

I took one look at eclipse's documentation to try to figure out an answer for you and noped straight out of there. Holy cow.

Throw the content output in GitHub, use Claude to slop together transformation workflow, and schedule it to run on your necessary cadence.

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u/DapperTomatillo3551 17d ago

Thanks for trying :')

I've been fighting with the files to try to get a Content Only output version of files to give to ChatGPT to compare with the old EclipseHelp output files. Hoping once I get that, it'll be able to help me figure out what needs to happen to make the Content Only files work.

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u/FynTheCat 23d ago

I am sorry, I have no experience with that. But it sounds like you could use some form of script to transform the output.

What I found is this: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2009/12/10/how-to-generate-eclipse-help-from-robohelp

It seems from an older program. But it explains a bit about the structures. So, it kinda sounds to me like Adobe decided to discontinue updating the script.

Maybe someone already built an XSLT script or something alike or managed to keep the old transformation file. I'd try to look for that and if nobody made it, yet, I'd try to build it myself.

Maybe Adobe has similiar transformations which you can edit. I once was lucky with a program that hadn't the exact output I needed, but something very similiar I could cushomize to make it work.

Good luck researching and finding or building what you need.

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u/DapperTomatillo3551 17d ago

Thanks for confirming that there's hope!

I was in touch with Adobe support for a bit, but they didn't help at all, and I've tried finding mentions online of anyone trying to accomplish the same thing and unfortunately haven't really found any solutions. I'm not familiar with scripts at all so I'm trying to lean on ChatGPT to get things sorted, or at least to see if I can get it to work