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Subject:Re: Converting Windows Help Files to OS/2 From:Michael Priestley <mpriestley -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 26 Jan 1996 13:32:58 EST
Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- twh -dot- msn -dot- sub -dot- org> writes:
>MP> 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.
Our discussion started when someone asked about IPF authoring tools;
you replied that, as far as you knew, there were none. I responded with
IPF Editor and HyperWise (also HLP/PDK, Katt, and others). Some are good,
some are bad. There quite definitely _are_ good authoring tools for it.
>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.
Working with IPF should not be like that. Your experience, which certainly
sounds terrible, could have been prevented with the use of appropriate
authoring tools and documentation. It's unfortunate that they were not
available to you. There definitely should have been someone on your team who
read OS/2 magazines and monitored OS/2 newsgroups, who could have made your
introduction to IPF a lot less painful.
>MP> experience, and never gave IPF a real chance
>I had none because of the tools I had to use at that customer.
Blame the customer, not the tools. Better tools exist.
>My experiences were from the pre-WARP times and the developers of my customer
>might have suffered a no-documentation error.
The WARP-level docs were extensively rewritten. They included a lot more
samples, and a lot more explanation (as well as additional functions, such
as support for symbols, and run-time conditional processing). Still, if you
really want to get away from the tag language, I'd recommend something like
HyperWise, with its WYSIWYG display, and link-creation using drag and drop.
Greetings from Canada,
Michael Priestley
mpriestley -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com
Disclaimer: speaking on my own behalf, not IBM's.
