communication department

Volume XX Number 3

Adobe Courts Technical Communicators

Adobe Systems Incorporated wants to reinforce the company’s relationship with technical communicators, and has demonstrated this by becoming the Platinum Sponsor at this year's Technical Communication Summit —STC's 54th Annual Conference—May 12–16. (Read more about the sponsorship in the February 2007 issue of Intercom, page 29.)

But what does this mean? What does Adobe want technical communicators to know about the company and its products? Intercom asked Michael Hu, senior product marketing manager at Adobe.

Intercom: Adobe has made a huge commitment to the Technical Communication Summit. Why?

Hu: We want technical communicators to know that Adobe has more to offer them than just FrameMaker. We've pulled together standard-setting tools that technical communicators use in their work, and we're evolving these into a more integrated user experience. The individual pieces are RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate, and Acrobat 3D.

Intercom: This is similar to what Adobe did with Creative Suite for graphic designers?

Hu: Along similar lines, yes. A core audience for the Creative Suite is creative professionals—people whose primary job is to produce high-quality print and Web output, typically for commercial publishing. Adobe started off by offering many of the individual tools those creative professionals use, and over time we brought the individual tools together to produce an integrated suite. This time around, our focus is on technical communicators—many of whom already use FrameMaker, RoboHelp, Captivate, and, of course, Acrobat.

Intercom: So, how do the technical communication pieces fit together?

Hu: Obviously, the programs and technologies we acquired from Macromedia are key. Flash and Adobe PDF play important, complementary roles in the publishing process. The individual products each have their own integration points, which are based around how people use them in their day-to-day workflow. For example, RoboHelp is used by the majority of professionals who produce help systems for desktop and Web-based applications and corporate intranets.

Intercom: And it's just been updated . . .

Hu: Yes—the first major RoboHelp update in three years. An example of cross-product integration is how RoboHelp and Captivate fit together. Adobe Captivate 2 (formerly RoboDemo) allows technical communicators to create software simulations that illustrate how the real software works. It's something every help developer should have in his or her toolkit.

Intercom: What do you do with these simulations?

Hu: You can deploy simulations created with Captivate as standalone e-learning deliverables, or you can integrate them into your RoboHelp help system.

Intercom: Everybody's talking about it, so I have to ask: Do you support DITA?

Hu: Oh, yes! FrameMaker has some DITA support right out of the box, and you can get more by downloading one of our free application packs at www.adobe.com/go/dita. FrameMaker was a pioneer in bringing XML support to technical documentation, and we'll continue to support that into the future.