TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
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Gordon Mclean outlined a few requirements and then asked:
Anyone heard of a solution for this? A product? Or are we forging ahead
on our own?
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What you're talking about is a Web site. For Web sites, you have three tools to choose from, Dreamweaver, GoLive, or FrontPage. For extensive debates on the pros and cons of these products, do a search in the archives. Now, you could use RoboHTML Help (or whatever it's called nowadays) to create Web Help, which will do the same thing.
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Right the requirement is for flat content (HTML or XML) with a
dynamically created structure.
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You'll probably want to look at ASP or PHP or some other database-driven critter.
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Well it has to run client side (no server interaction can be guaranteed). Trickier?
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JavaScript.
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Must be cross-platform, cross-browser (potentially usable on UNIX boxes,
Windows boxes and we won't know what browser they are using. We also
need to be able to plug in additional content in the future.
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Good luck on this one. Browsers don't do things the same way, so you will never have everything one-hundred per cent the same. Best way to ensure cross-browser compatibility is to make your files valid html, that means following the W3C standards and validating every page. It's easy, just takes a bit of getting used to. If you go with making Web help, I believe RoboHTML output works in several different browsers.
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It'll need to be XML based, I guess.
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Not necessarily. Nothing in what you have described seems to require XML. What is does require is a complete rethinking of how you write documentation, especially if you've been writing a lot of print docs. Now, if you're going to be reusing a lot of content, AND producing that content in a variety of different formats, you might want to think about xml, but even then, a good CSS and a good html template would be just as effective in some cases.
If you have any questions or want more info, let me know.
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