RE: Do you use any single source documentation methods?

["Lydia Wong" <lydiaw -at- fpoint -dot- com>]

> 1) Please state your name and job title.
Lydia Wong, Technical Writer

> 2) What documents do you single source?
We single source our user's guides and reference guides. These are guides
for our products: third-party controls for Windows developers (i.e.,
ActiveX, VBX, and DLL controls).

> 3) What software tools do you use to generate and
> process the documents?
We use FrameMaker for authoring and print/PDF output. We use WebWorks
Publisher for online help (WinHelp/HTML Help) and HTML output.

> 4) What production method do you use:
>    a) convert paper documents to on-line.
>    b) convert on-line to paper.
>    c) generate both on-line and paper documents from a
> database or master document.
a) Convert paper documents to online, though we are heading more toward c)
in that we will no longer be printing books, and only producing PDF and
online help from our FrameMaker files.

> 5) Does the process work successfully?
It works fairly well, but I wouldn't say it is as seamless as we'd like yet.

> 6) What problems have you encountered?
Not realizing the time involved for setting this up, especially for
configuring WebWorks Publisher for our needs.

Our other big (initial) problem was that WWP didn't have their RTF output
designed for WinHelp 3.1 output, which is what we originally needed.

Finally, one ongoing problem is buy-in and understanding from the team.
Mainly, this shows up in not setting up things in FrameMaker correctly (due
in part to bugs in Frame, quite honestly), so the output must be checked
carefully. Ongoing training is helping resolve this problem, but it is still
a problem.