Re: What would you do?

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

Hi Kevin -

I strongly recommend you look at AuthorIT.

It has the same benefits as an XML-based publishing system such as DITA. 
The difference is that it's been around for a few years and is being 
used successfully now by tech writing groups ranging from large 
companies to lone writers. If you've been following the very long thread 
"Giving up on XML" on techwr-l you'll know that, although many people 
including me think XML and DITA have huge promise, almost no-one thinks 
it's suitable right now for a small group with no previous XML experience.

AuthorIT is strong in some areas that apply to your situation:
- It can import Word files.
- It has a built-in content management system that makes it easy to 
store and reuse chunks of information such as standard topics, graphics, 
logos, notes, and so on. This means that you don't have multiple copies 
of similar information that gradually gets out of sync.
- Formatting and lists are very solid. It's easy to apply styles 
correctly and consistently and very hard to get yourself into trouble 
with manual formatting, as you can so easily in Word.
- It can output to PDF, HTML, online help, Word and XML.
- It has very good tools for managing translation (e.g. identifying 
which text has changed since a previous release so that only these 
chunks need to be sent out for translation).

If you're interested in following this up, try the vendor's web site 
(http://www.author-it.com/) and the very helpful user self-help list at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/authorit-users/messages.

Regards

Stuart
_______________________________________

Kevin said:
 > I started this tech writing job last week. The company has several
 > documents, all giant Word files. They want to move into an XML
 > environment, so we can 1) maintain XML modules of information,
 > and create printable user guides at will, 2) include some of these
 > XML files as online help, clickable from the UI.
 >
 > Translation is also a concern...as they want to maintain multiple
 > languages (English, French, German, Dutch, etc...).
 >
 > So, here I am...with a bunch of crappy and poorly-maintained Word
 > files, and I need to create a state-of-the-art XML system. They
 > keep talking about DITA...but I'm not convinced that the DITA
 > format is the perfect way to go. Frankly, I'm not sure about much
 > at the moment.

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printed documentation. Features include single source authoring, team authoring,
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