MadCap Acquires Doc-to-Help, Expands Lineup of Authoring Tools

Doc-to-Help logo

San Diego’s MadCap Software, which specializes in software used to create help documents, owners’ manuals, user guides, and other types of professional documentation, says today it has acquired longtime rival Doc-to-Help from GrapeCity, the Japanese software and services provider.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Privately held MadCap was founded in 2005 by key members of eHelp (formerly Blue Sky Software), created in 1990 to advance RoboHelp authoring software that eHelp had created for Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Macromedia acquired eHelp in 2003, but was chiefly interested in its Flash-based software simulation program. Adobe acquired Macromedia two years later, but the San Dego team that had created RoboHelp felt even more forsaken.

MadCap CEO Anthony Olivier told me he resolved to avoid taking venture capital, saying that investors’ push for returns at eHelp had led to their unhappy experience following the Macromedia buyout.

Today, MadCap competes against Adobe’s RoboHelp, and such rivals as AuthorIT and Quadralay’s WebWorks. MadCap says it has thousands of customers around the world that use its software to create and manage documents and multimedia content for corporate intranets, help systems, policy and procedure manuals, user guides, instruction manuals, and other knowledge bases. The company says its flagship product, MadCap Flare, is now the industry’s leading native-XML multi-channel technical authoring software.

With the acquisition of all Doc-to-Help assets, MadCap says its product line now includes the leading multi-channel authoring software based on Microsoft Word.  Doc-to-Help team also is moving from GrapeCity’s ComponentOne business in Pittsburgh, PA, to MadCap’s headquarters in La Jolla. MadCap says Doc-to-Help is ideal for users who take a more book-like approach to content development.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.