Update to apps suite integrates AIR and Acrobat.com services, adds Photoshop to a mix that already included FrameMaker, Acrobat, Captivate, and RoboHelp.

Adobe Technical Communication  Suite 2 boosts PDF, online documentation

Update to apps suite integrates AIR and Acrobat.com services, adds Photoshop to a mix that already included FrameMaker, Acrobat, Captivate, and RoboHelp.

Despite advances in Web-based document management, the bulk of help files, training content and other highly formatted documents are still published as PDFs. That includes about 95 percent of technical documents created with Adobe Systems Inc.'s Technical Communication Suite; the latest version of the suite shows Adobe appreciates that.

Version 2 of the suite, announced Tuesday, does include options for publishing to other formats, including XML/HTML, print, PDF, WSF, WebHelp, FlashHelp, Microsoft HTML Help, OracleHelp, JavaHelp and Adobe AIR, but according to senior product evangelist R.J. Jacquez, PDF will likely remain the standard form of output.

"PDF is the most pervasive output format for technical communications," Jacquez says, in part because the free Adobe Reader is so accessible and stable, across platforms. "The ubiquity of the Reader plays a big role."

The new suite version also supports content for mobile devices, as well as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), an open, XML-based standard for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information.

The suite includes:

RoboHelp, a longtime standard for authoring online help docs, which Adobe acquired (along with RoboPDF, something of an Acrobat competitor) when it merged with Macromedia, who had bought original owner eHelp in 2003.

Captivate (formerly RoboDemo), an authoring tool that started out life as an eHelp product and now supports simulations and demos in Flash format, which in turn can be ported to RoboHelp or PDF documents.

A full version of Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, which brings handling of 3-D models to technical documentation.

Photoshop CS4, the number one user-requested upgrade to the suite's first version, says Jacquez, who adds that Photoshop will be integrated into the Technical Communication Suite's workflow to make image processing faster from within RoboHelp, FrameMaker, and Captivate.

FrameMaker 9. This grand old page-layout application is enjoying something of a renaissance thanks to its pedigree as one of the original, robust SGML handlers that's been around since 1986.

Nowadays, as XML—a subset of SGML—makes its way into technical documents, Frame is poised to reclaim its position of king of that hill after languishing in obscurity for half a decade. The latest version of FrameMaker will be able to import Photoshop PSD files natively and switch to Photoshop to edit them via a right-click.

"Frame's become the de facto standard for authoring long documents," Jacquez says. "Somehow, Adobe sort of dropped the ball, but it's making a huge comeback.... Frame is really Adobe's XML solution, and [XML] is really giving it a second life."

Technical Communication Suite 2 also adds online review-and-comment features served via Acrobat.com. Technical authors will be able to show documents to colleagues and clients, who in turn can offer edits and comments that the author can read and integrate into documents in FrameMaker.

Authors will also be able to conduct online meetings with Connect's screen-sharing capabilities—again, served via Acrobat.com.

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