Re: Review--JavaHelp Jumpstart Conference

[Eric Ray <ejr -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Mark,
Many thanks for the review!

At 02:24 PM 5/5/99 -0700, Mark Giffin wrote:
>Brief Report on the
>JavaHelp Jumpstart Conference
<snip>
>I'm disappointed in JavaHelp, and I have concerns that it may not go
>anywhere any time soon. The conference itself was fine, and the

Summary: (Mark's thoughts in my words) "Not ready for prime time,
vendors not enthusiastic, too bad."

Did anyone else go? Any other thoughts or comments on this?

I wasn't able to make it, but have been experimenting with
JavaHelp and will probably use it for an upcoming project.

In many ways (particularly performance on an old-n-slow
Windows machine --P133 w/80Mb) and the display and graphics
irregularities, I'd agree with Mark's assessment. However,
performance on a good UNIX workstation is spectacular,
and I've been told by independent sources that performance
on a reasonably good Windows machine isn't bad at all.

Because of the "bells and whistles" (read search capabilities
and easy packaging for delivery), we're likely to move in this
direction--we do need cross-platform capabilities and
a certain amount of flash, and manually coding our many
delivery options and managing the maintenance issues
with plain HTML help (no TM) isn't really feasible.

Our feeling is that Javahelp isn't the ideal -- far from it
in some ways -- but is closer than any of the other
options and the gamble for more improvements and
development seems better with JavaHelp than with
Webhelp, Jelp, or JHelper.

Any other thoughts?
Eric


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray    RayComm, Inc.
http://www.raycomm.com/      ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com

*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_


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