RE: Help on managing software docmentation

Subject: RE: Help on managing software docmentation
From: "Broberg, Mats" <mabr -at- flir -dot- se>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:39:53 +0200


Frank,

I would seriously consider XML, since it automates many repetetive tasks
that are involved in issuing new revisions of your documentation on a
regular basis. Also, if your company plans to translate the
documentation into many different languages, native XML is the only way
to go.

Investing in a complete XML system (editor, version management system,
translation administration and automatic formatter to PDF) may be quite
an investment ofcourse (but not more than the low-to-mid 5 digit range),
and whether you should go down that road depends of many things - e.g.
how much documentation you need to maintain and revise, how many
languages you need to translate into, how important your superiors think
that good documentation is etc.

At the other end of the price range there are low-cost, "roll your own"
systems, with open source editors, formatters and version control
software.

An extremely powerful, battle-proven system is Skribenta, which I use at
FLIR. We're outputting a total amount of 300,000-400,000 unique pages in
16 different languages p.a., using this system.

http://www.skribenta.se/english/index.html

Best regards,
Mats Broberg
Technical Documentation Manager

www.flirthermography.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-148563 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-148563 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of f-ws
> Sent: den 16 september 2005 09:02
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Help on managing software docmentation
>
>
> Hello fellow list(en)ers,
>
> I hope I can draw on the profound knowledge floating around
> on this list.
> I am in the process of writing a user documentation for a
> software application.
> "Trying to hit a moving target" describes the writing
> situation best. The software is constantly changing, and the
> documentation needs versioning a lot. Not to speak of freely
> configurable menues, and a user group concept showing
> different dialogs to various authorized user.
>
> Now my question. Do you have any information and tips on how
> to organize and manage such a documentation? Are there any
> tools which help in versioning software documentation?
>
> Your help is very much appreciated :-)
> Thanks Frank

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