Cross-platform on-line documentation

[Andrew Gilling <andy -at- DIRCON -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Can anybody suggest how I might go about producing on-line documentation for
both Windows programmers and Macintosh programmers, preferably from a single
source? What needs documenting is a large body of C++ code at a multimedia
publishing company that produces titles for both platforms. The application
of origin would be Word for Windows.

My boss wants Windows Help for the Windows people, so that they can summon
it up from within their development tool, MSVC, and is asking whether Help
files could not simply be converted to HTML for the Macintosh people. So one
question is, do you know if this could be done? But I am sceptical about the
idea if it would mean an inferior provision for the Macintosh people. I
wonder whether features like TOC's and searchable indexes would be lost in
the Help-to-HTML conversion, and whether I would then be able to add them to
the HTML output; which is the second question.

What the Macintosh programmers would really prefer is something like Windows
Help but for the Macintosh, ideally something like ThinkReference, which
they too could open from within their development tool, CodeWarrior.

Guidance would be very welcome.

Andrew Gilling (newish technical writer, but not desperately technical)

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