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This may be slighly beyond the scope of what you want to take on and
does require some programming (like in Perl). You've gotten some other
responses that might be more appropriate.
Still...
I would implement this in a cheap way using Perl and HTML comments.
(Could even be done with XML tags.) I'd introduce new tags, like:
<!-- myTag feature1 --><!-- myTag feature1 -->
I'd manually insert this pair of tags into the (main) HTML file(s) that
contain common text for all appplication versions before and after this.
Assuming that feature 1 had n different variants, there would be n
differently named files with the HTML slippets to cover that variant.
I'd probably make them official HTML files with
<HTML><head></head><body></body></html> tags so that the snippet files
could be read into a browser and viewed. Inside the <body></body> tags
I'd insert my tags with the appropriate text. Hence, I might have
"one.html" for the first variant that looked like:
<HTML><head></head><body>
<!-- myTag feature1 -->What's different in this version's feature 1.<!--
myTag feature1 -->
<!-- myTag feature2 -->What's different in this version's feature 2.<!--
myTag feature2 -->
</body></html>
Then I would create some master text file (master.txt) that acts like a
database file. For each line in this file, the first element tells you
which application you're dealing with, the second element tells you
which feature, and the third element tells you the file to find it in.
The perl tool that I write (my_tool.pl) would need to know which
application you're building documentation for and the master database
file.
my_tool.pl application_one master.txt
my_tool would, say, open all of the HTML files one-by-one in the current
directory. In each HTML file, it would look for pairs of these tags. The
names of the tags (feature1) would be matched with the appropriate
entries taken from the master.txt file. It would locate the associated
file, open it, extract the equivalently tagged text, insert this (with
the surrounding tags) into the HTML file, and move to the next tag. When
the HTML file was done, save it, go to the next HTML file.
This is just one solution and can certainly be refined. Anybody with a
little bit of Perl skills could implement this for you if you don't do
it yourself.
Doing it yourself or inhouse might be overkill. If not planned properly,
it can easily get screwed up or become too complicated.
But then again, it might not be overkill because you can have more
freedom in what you insert and how. I already use a technique similar to
this to handle navigation and copyright information (containing dates,
product versions). Whenever some pointy-haired boss or marketing puke
decides that I need a new button, a new background color, a new
disclaimer at the bottom of some special release, etc., I make the
change in one place and process hundreds of HTML files with my tools in
a matter of seconds. (I'm presently creating dumb HTML documentation
systems delivered on CD -- no javascript.)
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Meg Halter [mailto:aiki4us -at- yahoo -dot- com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 10:02 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: html editor --> pages with shared text
>
>
> Here's another question, related to one I posted before my
> much-too-short vacation. Can anyone recommend an html editor
> that will take chunks of html (perhaps stored in separate files)
> and insert that code in line in another html page? I'd
> originally hoped to handle this much like graphic files are
> inserted into html. But from the replies to my earlier question
> and from some reading, it seems that it can't be done that way.
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+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
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