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RE: Converting large volume of Word documents to HTML
Subject:RE: Converting large volume of Word documents to HTML From:"Ridder, Fred" <Fred -dot- Ridder -at- Dialogic -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>, Terry_Monaghan -at- idx -dot- com Date:Sat, 1 Jul 2000 13:37:02 -0400
On Fri, 30 Jun 2000 Terry_Monaghan -at- idx -dot- com wrote (in part):
>We are in the process of developing a plan to
>convert a large volume of Word documentation (altogether it's about 20,000
>pages) to HTML. Our original thought was to use RoboHTML 2000, primarily
because
>all
>of the writers here have been using classic RoboHelp, so the learning
curve, and
>the expense, would be minimal. As we're getting further into it, we're
seeing a
>lot of the bugs/"features" of RoboHTML that might cause problems and/or
>headaches down the road.
>
>My question is whether any of you have gone through
>this conversion process, and if you might have some words of wisdom, or
maybe a
>horror story, that you can share with me. We need to make a decision soon.
If
>there is a better tool out there that could do the same thing for us, we
might
>be able to squeeze the money out, but we don't know of any that would be
better.
>One requirement we have is that there must be some way for the reader to
print
>out topics/books/sections, or at the very least a way for us to convert the
HTML
>documents back to Word or pdf.
Well, six months or so ago, the answer would have been clear: use HTML
Transit from Infoaccess. I've been using HTML Transit since version 2.0
(late 1997?) to convert Word files to HTML. Since most of our company's
technical publications were written using the same Word template, HTML
Transit has worked very well for us. If we had needed to do more
"on-the-fly"
conversions (for example, if we had quicker document revision cycles) we
probably would have used another Infoaccess product called Transit Central,
which runs on a server rather than on the desktop.
Unfortunately, at this time the answer is not so clear because as of Jan 1
Infoaccess increased their prices by a factor of 10x. Seriously! The price
of HTML Transit went from $500 to $5000. Their stated reason was that
IT professionals weren't taking their products seriously because they were
priced too low, so they were increasing their prices to make them more
credible as corporate solutions. I haven't bothered checking their website
to see how well there decision has played out and whether they have
reconsidered the validity of their "reasoning".
My opinions only; I don't speak for Dialogic or Intel...
Fred Ridder (Fred -dot- Ridder -at- Dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic, an Intel Company
Parsippany, NJ
