Looking for a HAT

[Jill Scudamore <jillian -at- YORKU -dot- CA>]

I've been asked to research various Help Authoring Tools (HATs) in
order to find one that meets our needs. I've been browsing the net
(see http://members.aol.com/LindaMoore/helpauth.html for a large
list of HATs with links), but I'm a bit overwhelmed by the
information. I'm hoping that you might be able to recommend a tool.

The Environment:

I'm writing on-line help for a University system. The system is
distributed to the workstations via an upload to the University
servers from a central location. Since there are several thousand
workstations, it is very important for me to create a help system
which can be distributed in the same manner (i.e. no individual
visits by tech support).

My target audience is running Windows 95 and MS Office 4.3. About
half of them are running Netscape, the other half are running
various versions of Internet Explorer.

At this point management cannot standardize the desk tops (phew, no
holy wars here ;-)

On a whim, I downloaded a trial version of RoboHTML. Unfortunately,
it only runs with Internet Explorer. However, it did contain all of
the features that I was looking for (and was easy to learn!). Are
there any tools out there which look like RoboHTML, but can be used
in my environment?

Thank you for your help.

Jill.

Jill Scudamore
SIS Training Coordinator
Office of the Registrar
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada