Re: User Manuals

[Chris Morton <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>]

>From a usability standpoint, and targeting printed manuals (whether by your
company or the end user), the format used with the Aldus (i.e., pre-Adobe)
versions of PageMaker were exceptional, I thought.

I had to learn FM for my last gig; nothing beats Adobe's FM Classroom In a
Book if you're in a hurry and can train yourself. That said, FM has seen
little in the way of any UI upgrade since it was ported over from Unix. I
found it appallingly retarded.

Given my druthers and with no legacy requirements hanging over my head, and
again focusing on the manual ultimately being printed somewhere, I'd choose
Adobe InDesign, also relying on the ID Classroom In a Book. It's apparent to
me that this tool is getting the Adobe programmers' attention and will
continue to do so for some time.

InDesign can output PDFs all day long, so Web delivery works, too.

> Chris
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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