Single-sourcing tool

[elizabeth j allen]

Oh mighty techwhirlers, hear my plea!

If you worked in a small department (2 tech writers) within a larger
company (16,000+ employees worldwide), and you were given the task of
recommending a tool to use, what would you recommend? But wait, there's
more! Here's the info you have to base your decision on:

     • The current tool for technical manuals is LaTeX
     • The group of two may grow to a group of 5 before the end of the year
     • The growth is driven by massive new products being developed
     • The level of documentation complexity is increasing exponentially
     • Long learning curves for tools are *not* a good thing (see "LaTeX")
     • Single-sourcing is *required*
     • LaTeX is used because it supports complicated conditionals like:
       \ifthenelse(A + (\not B + \not C))(true_statement)(false_statement)
     • The new tools need to support complicated conditionals
     • Your manager trusts your recommendation and needs it today
     • Whatever you recommend will be the tool you and your coworkers use
for these new massive doc projects. They'll blame you if it sucks.

I bow myself before the collective wisdom of the great techwhirlers!

Elizabeth "Is that complicated enough for you?" Allen  :)
--
Elizabeth J. Allen
Technical Writer
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein