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Subject:Converting Windows Help Files to OS/2 From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Wed, 24 Jan 1996 18:48:02 +0100
Hello Michael,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von Michael Priestley an All am 15.01.96
MP> From: Michael Priestley <mpriestley -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com>
MP> > with other words: considering the IPF compiler as something
MP> like an
MP> > assembler, you must write OS/2 help on an abstraction level
MP> like PC
MP> > programs were written some 20 years ago.
MP> Um, no. First off, there are WYSIWYG editors available, just
MP> as there
MP> are for RTF. However, you do sacrifice some control when you
MP> use an
MP> editor; tagging directly allows you more flexibility (the same
MP> as RTF).
our discussion started at the point that there were hardly any *good*
authoring tools for IPF.
MP> Second off, it is decidedly _not_ "an abstraction level like PC
MP> programs
MP> were written some 20 years ago". Even assuming PCs were around
MP> 20 years
MP> ago. It is at the same abstraction level as HTML, which is a
MP> decidedly
MP> modern innovation, and also decidedly simpler than programming,
MP> at any
MP> abstraction level.
Perhaps I should clarify my point of view: As long as I am to know the name of
a topic, as long as I am to know every detail of the underlying technology, as
long as I get no support for reuse of my texts, I consider myself working on
assembler level. Perhaps we could consider authoring tools based on Wordbasic
like Doc-to-Help as something like interpreted BASIC (which these tools are!).
MP> I would guess that you were blinkered by your RTF
MP> experience, and never gave IPF a real chance
I had none because of the tools I had to use at that customer.
MP> there are about 10 million satisfied OS/2 users
MP> who would balk at calling them a "mainframe company".
I did not disqualify OS/2 (I would *love* to have a real alternative to
the Microsoft monopoly), but complained about the authoring tools to write
OS/2 help. But one important point might be the following:
MP> And
MP> the documentation for IPF (in the Warp toolkit) is a heckuvalot
MP> better
MP> now than it was at the OS/2 2.0 level I used when I started.
My experiences were from the pre-WARP times and the developers of my customer
might have suffered a no-documentation error.
Greetings from Germany,
Alexander
--
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