HM 8.4 Released with free DeepL, SVG Equation Editor

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Tim Green
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HM 8.4 Released with free DeepL, SVG Equation Editor

Unread post by Tim Green »

The Help+Manual 8.4 maintenance update has just been released with two major new features:

Support for Free DeepL Translation

AI-based machine translation by DeepL is better than anything else out there. The quality is simply stunning, finally making machine translation usable rather than just a way to produce entertaining memes. DeepL has recently started to offer free API keys, that you can use to auto-translate a certain amount of text per month (the free contingent is a generous 500.000 characters). The free API keys, however, require a different API address and Help+Manual 8.4 now works with both, the paid and the free translation API.

DeepL has now also added support for 13 additional languages.

Improved Equation Editor with SVG output and extended LaTeX Support

The updated equation editor now supports a much wider range of LaTeX commands. In addition to this, the output is now vector-based SVG by default instead of PNG, so you get clear, crisp equations at any zoom setting.

There are also improvements in Link Lists, PDF and a large number of minor changes and corrections.

See this blog posting for full details:

Help+Manual 8.4 Release Notes

You can download the new installer on the regular update page:

Help+Manual update installer page

We recommend that all users update as soon as possible.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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chfrmeyer
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Re: HM 8.4 Released with free DeepL, SVG Equation Editor

Unread post by chfrmeyer »

How does the free DeepL access compare with the paid API plugin key (roughly 5 Euro/Month plus charge for actual use, usually very modest)?

What would be a good reason to keep on paying?
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Re: HM 8.4 Released with free DeepL, SVG Equation Editor

Unread post by Tim Green »

chfrmeyer wrote: Thu Aug 26, 2021 4:32 pm How does the free DeepL access compare with the paid API plugin key (roughly 5 Euro/Month plus charge for actual use, usually very modest)?
The free key gives you a million characters a month, but that is including all the XML code in your topics as well -- it simply counts everything in the file. This can end up being quite a lot less than you expect, particularly if you import manually formatted text from Word without cleaning up your XML by re-applying styles in Help+Manual. Then your actual text can easily be less than 5% of the total, so you could end up using up your quota quite quickly.
What would be a good reason to keep on paying?
Simple decency and honesty. DeepL does fantastic work and they deserve to be paid for what they do. If you are using their service commercially you should be paying for it. Only use the free version for testing to figure out if you want to use it or not.

I feel strongly about this from my own experience: I develop the entire Premium Pack and it accounts for over half of my income. If everyone using it actually paid for it I would be fine. As it is I earn less than 10 euros an hour on it, which is not really viable, but there you go. :roll:
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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