Re: Integrating RoboHELP with MS SQL database

["Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com>]

A quick answer: not that I've seen. (You might ask also on the HATT list if
you have not already.)

For the past couple of years I've attended sessions at the Online Help
Conference that deal with this very issue. All the solutions I've seen have
been "roll-your-own" systems, typically using ASP to collect "chunks" of
content, assemble them, and present them.

I saw one solution where clients could do all sorts of customizations (they
used web forms, basically), and then those customizations, of terms, of
blocks fo text, and so on, were saved in the database and then displayed in
the Help sysstem.

It's a solution I may be looking to develop should I continue here. One
trick I realize I'll face is when individual words are customized (such as
titles, labels, etc.), how to handle the text around them.

For example, if a label has been changed by a customer from "Login" to
"Access," and an instruction originally read "Type a Login username," the
system would have to be smart enough to recognize that the article needs to
be changed. Similarly, again for single terms, when a plural is used in
text.

You can see that some intelligence is required; it's not a matter of just
replacing words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs with user-entered ones.
Not only have I not seen any RH capability to integrate with a back-end DB,
I havne't seen it contain such an "intelligence" to result in correct
content.

Chuck Martin

"Nichols, Andrew" <anichols -at- itiusa -dot- com> wrote in message
news:214905 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 

I'm writing documentation for my company's software (public safety
software). The software is highly configurable in design including the
wording of menu options, titles of modules, etc. For example, when the
product ships it will include records management software for
police/sheriff that will be called Police RMS. However, during
installation the word police will be changed to Sheriff if appropriate.
Similarly, the racial profiling module will be configurable so that each
agency can name it as they see fit (some agencies prefer to call it
citizen contact). There are many other aspects to the software that will
be configurable like this, which makes writing the help difficult. We
will be storing these settings (i.e. Police RMS vs. Sheriff RMS) in a
settings table in MS SQL. Does anyone know if it is possible to
integrate RoboHELP 2002 with MS SQL to make the help files reflect
changes that the user has made to the configuration? I haven't gotten
much of a response from E-Help other than to have their sales department
contact me.

Thanks in advance,

Andrew Nichols




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

NEED TO PUBLISH YOUR FRAMEMAKER CONTENT ONLINE?

RoboHelp for FrameMaker is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to online Help, intranet, and Web.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! Call 800-718-4407 for
competitive pricing or view a live demo at: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.