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.
Subject:Options for non-proprietary XML/HTML-based help From:jmanwiller05 -at- yahoo -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 4 May 2005 07:10:05 -0600
In the discussion on the future of RoboHelp, some posters mentioned that
they didn't have to worry about it because they used their own XML-based
system for generating help.
I'm currently using RoboHelp X4 to generate WebHelp for my company's
browser-based application. Partially because of the uncertain future of
RoboHelp, I'm starting to look at other help tools.
One of our "would really like to have" requirements is that our customers
could customize/localize the help. Customers are able to change the
application text simply by editing a resource file, but the help does not
keep up with those changes, and it doesn't seem advisable to edit
generated WebHelp. So you end up with the page saying "Feature
Maintenance" and the help saying "Product Maintenance".
I could just give customers the source project and tell them to use
whatever tool we used to generate it, but I'd prefer to not force
customers to buy an expensive help authoring tool when they can basically
use Notepad to customize the application.
So would anyone (online or offline) be willing to talk about how they have
created a browser-based help system without using an expensive tool? How
does it handle:
- The standard index, contents, glossary
- Full-text search
- Conditional topics and text
- Variables
If the source is provided to customers, can they easily make changes? Can
they make the updates in the generated help?
Thanks,
Janice Manwiller
Sr. Technical Writer
Open Channel Solutions
WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT - EDIT AND REVIEW, REDEFINED
Accelerate the document lifecycle with full online discussions and unique feedback-management capabilities. Unlimited, efficient reviews for Word
and FrameMaker authors. Live, online demo: http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
