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Online help tools
Hi folks,
Me again. Here are my conclusions regarding our online help tool
discussion: MS HTML is good as far as it goes. The pitfalls are that it
is very bulky--it generates a big number of small files. It does work
well for jumping hyperlinks. Obviously, the down side is that no matter
how small the file, because of clustering, it takes a lot of hard drive
space.
This is not cool for uploading in the field or disk distribution. This
is cool for the web where each page should be a separate file and
customers can jump quickly on someone else's server space. (MS HTML
help builds a separate file for each help page.)
Here's is another alternative:
Doc-To-Help from WexTec vs 4.0 will let you build files under MS Word,
then by menu choice with one click generate any of the following:
1) written Adobe Acrobat .pdf files.
2) Windows help with .hlp and .cnt (Table of Contents) files. These
files are tight, very concise and easy to ship or upload. On the net
anyone accessing these files would come in to the Table of Contents and
be able to navigate from there.
3) HTML or Java help files (There are times when Java is better than
straight HTML as far as docs go).
This would be my preferred route but the downside is Doc-To-Help
Professional Costs around $780, and is not easy to index quickly if the
file is large. Even so, my guess is that the tool could save money, more
as you move forward, even more as you ship documentation with version,
especially if you desire to upload changes in the field and via net.
Beyond that, any one of you could take over keeping the docs current by
just feeding in input from the team into the pre-agreed upon outline.
This is not my call.
Feedback needed,
Rita
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