Well, yesterday certainly was an interesting day!

The day started with the Pundit's Panel. Like last year, the panel included four gurus (Sarah O'Keefe, Dave Gash, Mike Hughes, and Saul Carliner), and was moderated by Joe Welinske. While Joe ended last year with the news that RoboHelp would probably go away (thus leading to all sorts of posts), he started this year's by saying that it looks like RoboHelp would be around for awhile.

Officially, Adobe announced at the evening's mixer that RoboHelp development would continue. Right now, the "when" is a bit iffy, but obviously, I will post as soon as I hear anything substantive.

There was also a forum in the afternoon, taking the place of the usual "here's what's going on with Vista Help" session. The forum included seven panelists, including Kip Knox and Paul O'Rear from Microsoft, Help MVP Paul Neshamkin and myself, and three other Help experts (Rob Houser, Tony Self, and David Locke). Part of the discussion centered around the fact that WinHelp is being deprecated for Vista.

In a meeting last night, the Help MVPs were told that the WinHelp engine would not be included in Vista, and it also won't be available for download or distribution. The one thing I want to emphasize is that this decision was not made lightly, and everyone in the meeting knew both what the reaction would be and what the effects are.

If you are currently developing WinHelp, you need to think about switching to another output. WinHelp hasn't been touched in years, other than for security updates. However, at some point, even the security updates will not happen.

I'm not sure what announcements will be made today, but I'll keep you informed!