RoboHelp to Confluence converter

[Anant Sabane]

For a few other wikis like MediaWiki, converters are available to convert technical documentation generated using RoboHelp in these respective wiki formats and upload on their Wikis. Does Confluence offer such a converter, may be as a plugin or a third party tool? If users have to request for such a feature, what is the procedure to be followed? Kindly let me know.

[SarahA]

Hallo Anant

Here are a few ideas:

Option 1: From RoboHelp, output to Microsoft Word. Then use the Confluence Office Connector to import the Word documents into Confluence. Here is the documentation for the Office Connector. The Office Connector is part of Confluence - no need to buy a separate tool:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF35/Working+with+the+Office+Connector

Option 2: From RoboHelp, output to DocBook XML. Then use the Confluence Docbook Importer plugin to import the files to Confluence. The plugin is free of charge, developed and supported by Red Hat:

https://plugins.atlassian.com/plugin/details/43179

I hope these help. :)

Cheers, Sarah

[Anant Sabane]

Hello Sarah,

I tried both the options before my query. With Microsoft Word as output, the problem is, all the hyperlinks are removed as it is bundled as print documentation. That makes me restore all the links manually.

With DocBook XML output, I got some error while importing it in Confluence. Can you please guide me on how exactly can it be achieved?

Thanks,

Anant

[SarahA]

Hallo Anant

Hmm, that's a nuisance that RoboHelp removes the links from all Word output. I wonder if there's a setting you can configure in RoboHelp so that it retains the links? It's worth checking with the RoboHelp guides or helpdesk.

For the DocBook import into Confluence, the best thing is to contact the plugin developer, Vlastimil Eliáš. I've had a bit of correspondence with him on this page:

http://community.jboss.org/wiki/DocBookImportForConfluence

He's also given a link to some DocBook files that do work, so you may be able to compare the DocBook XML exported by RoboHelp with his XML. For example, the importer accepts only book-style DocBook XML, not article-style.

It may also be worth contacting Gina Fevrier, who recently did a mass conversion from RoboHelp to Confluence. She has started a new blog recently, but her previous blog is where she talks about the conversion:

http://ginafromtampa.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/using-confluence-wiki-for-online-help/

Good luck. I do hope someone can help, as I've never done it myself. I'd be very interested to hear how it works out.

Cheers

Sarah

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[Anant Sabane]

Thank you Sarah.

I tried importing DocBook sample available on the first link you have mentioned above. I got an error. I have posted the details on that blog page in a comment and requrested Vlastimil Elias to help me with it. I have tried contacting Gina too. Hopefully will get a solution. I will let you know on the progress.

With regards,

Anant

[Karla Marsh]

Robohelp does not remove hyperlinks from the Word doc. Here's an example in one of my smaller user guides: https://help.globalscape.com/help/guides/DMZ-Gateway-v3-5-UserGuide.pdf

I export the Word doc from RoboHelp and then save the Word doc as a PDF and the internal document links are still there. I've been using RoboHelp since v6 and always had the links.

Maybe it's Confluence who is dropping the links? If Confluence is breaking up the Word doc into individual topics (w/o preserving the links) then that would be a problem in Confluence.

I love for this to work, though.

Karla