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I work in the documentation department for a company that provides both
mainframe and Windows environment services to the securities industry. We currently distribute documentation for the mainframe product in print,
HTML, and PDF formats, using a combination of Word, Acrobat, Dreamweaver,
PageMill, PaintShop Pro, and others. Changes to the software for which we
write are relayed to the user on a weekly or biweekly basis. To do this,
we send out a newsletter (in print, HTML and PDF formats) explaining the
change. Generally, a newsletter can be one to 5 pages in length,
depending on the changes. Once these have been sent to the clients, we
copy the information from the newsletter into the manual files in Word,
which are then converted to HTML files.
To complicate things further, our company recently implemented Word 2000,
which totally changes the way in which Word files are converted to Web
pages (XML files, etc.), and this makes our current filing and HTML
linking practices unusable. As our user manuals are distributed on CDs,
file size is also a big factor. We are currently using a filter so that
we can bypass the XML files, but it's not a perfect solution.
In any case, we are trying to simplify matters. This could mean an entire
overhaul to our distribution system, including a move to exclusively PDF,
if necessary.
Here are some questions (and I tried to research as much as possible in
the archives before posting, but our questions are pretty high-level,
while many of the posts are specific):
The obvious move for us is to go to FrameMaker, as it seems to be industry
standard. We are currently experimenting with version 5.5. Is 6.0
significantly different? Are there other products that might work for our
situation?
If we move exclusively to PDF for distribution, we may have file size
issues. Our user manuals are constantly undergoing changes and must
always be updated. An average manual can be 20-30 pages in length, and we
have over 300 manuals and a couple thousand reports that are distributed.
Will this mean having to keep copies of all our documentation in both the
original version (FrameMaker, Word, etc.) AND in PDF format? Or is there
a way to simply keep PDF files AND be able to edit them later?
The HTML documentation for our manuals includes sizeable two-framed
documents for screen examples. The mainframe screen is shown as a mock-up
in the upper frame, with the definitions of the fields shown in the lower
frame. Is there any way to do this using PDF?
I have plenty more questions, but these are top-priority.
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