Ever since the WritersUA Conference earlier this year in Palm Springs, folks have been asking about RoboHelp. (I mostly get asked...or told ;-)...to add RoboHelp back to the HAT Matrix because, after all, Adobe says a new version is in development. But that's another story...)

Last night, John Daigle posted a link to Adobe's updated FAQ to the HATT list. (Thanks, John!) It covers RoboHelp, FrameMaker, and even mentions Quadralay.

They cover some interesting points:

• The next major release is expected in the first half of 2007. This has slipped slightly from the time frame that was announced at WritersUA, when they announced that the new version would be released in the first quarter of 2007. However, the latest version of Microsoft Office has also slipped, which could be a factor. (I'll feel better when a RoboHelp beta is announced.)

• You can submit new feature requests through the link on the FAQ page.

• They are monitoring logs and the user forums to track the most common bugs so that they can be fixed. (I wonder if the print output will now contain true cross-references?)

• They state that they continue "to sell and support RoboHelp", but later on, state that they will "evaluate the opportunity to reintroduce upgrade and maintenance plans". So, "support" means that you can use the Knowledge Base and forums, and pay for individual support calls. It *doesn't* mean that you can purchase an upgrade or maintenance plan.

  Another FAQ says that current users shouldn't consider migrating to another HAT.

  The combination of these three FAQs really bothers me. While many of the other paragraphs are nothing more than "marketing-speak" (and everyone knows how fond I am of "marketing-speak" ;-) ), these three answers actually hope that you'll continue to invest in X5, even though the status quo hasn't changed. That bothers me. (And I know it doesn't bother everyone. I'm just saying that it bothers me.)

• OK, seriously, it is possible to produce online Help with RoboHelp from FrameMaker source files. However, most experts pity those who have to use this process because it's a) not single sourcing and b) it's highly inefficient. (Does this mean that they might seriously consider bringing back RoboHelp for FrameMaker?)

By next year at this time, new versions of both RoboHelp Office and FrameMaker should be available. Cross your fingers :-)

This version of my blog hasn't been around that long, but within days of getting it set up and running, I started fighting the spammers. And until last last week, I was beginning to think that they were winning ;-)

Part of the problem is that I just didn't know enough when I installed the software. It seems that spammers are well acquainted with blogging applications, and have figured out how to get around most of the things that we as bloggers do to stop them.

I use b2evolution, which was easy to install thanks to cPanel (an administrative interface to my server). And I was even able to pull it into my updated design for helpstuff. But it was a week before I learned about the blacklist...and by then, I had been hit with search spam, referrer spam, and comment spam.

So I started a daily routine of updating the blacklist and deleting the various forms of spam. Meanwhile, my site stats were a mess...they told me that helpstuff had suddenly become one of the most popular sites on the Web ;-) Of course, every time a spammer hit the site, the stats were updated...and updated...and updated... The kicker was last week when I discovered a referral search term that I really didn't want showing up (and thankfully, it's fallen off the search pages now). (Basically, because I wasn't deleting comment spam quickly at the beginning, it was getting caught by the search bots.)

I finally implemented some sanity-saving features. I disable trackbacks and pingbacks. I blocked domains. I even modified .htaccess, but that kinda caused a few other problems ;-), so my last change was to restore the backup version and hack the source files so that registration is required for comments.

I doubt the spammers will stay away for long...they'll figure something out. (I now get to delete several registered users a day, but that's a whole lot easier than trying to remove hundreds of bogus comments...especially when the comments all say "Sorry about this".)

Obviously, it's harder to update the blog when spending that much time just deleting stuff I don't want you to deal with. (You must get enough of your own spam...you don't need to read more here!) And I've had a couple of things going on, plus I'm waiting for some different pieces of news so that I can make announcements.

I hope you're enjoying this time of year, wherever you are :-) The backyard office is now open...Jesse likes it because he can swim as long as he likes ;-), and I like it because...well, really, isn't this why we have laptops and wireless connections? (We even watched the final World Soccer game by the pool on Sunday, which meant that there was no discussion about who would go outside and keep an eye on the swimmers and who got to watch the game.)

Talk to you soon!