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I've been working with AuthorIT for almost a year and I'm really impressed with
its capabilities.
As David mentions, it is a bit different from other tools because you work in a
database (called a library). Files aren't created until you generate the output
(WinHelp, HTML Help, HTML 3.2, XHTML 1.0, JavaHelp, Oracle Help, and Print).
AuthorIT includes conditional text to the character level, versioning, and topic
tracking (a list of who edited the file and when). Topic re-use and embedded
topics make it really easy to re-use information.
Because everything in AuthorIT is an object, everything is controlled at the
object level. For example, if you want to change the appearance of your
hyperlinks, you modify the hyperlink object.
If you're generating any of the HTML outputs, the CSS is generated on the fly
from the list of styles. The appropriate HTML is written for the output (for
example, HTML 3.2 for JavaHelp). Templates and media objects let you control all
aspects of the output.
Download the Workgroup Evaluation, which is the one I suggest for most folks.
> AuthorIT is an excellent authoring tool, though it works somewhat
> differently than the other tools you've probably evaluated (RoboHelp,
> Doc-To-Help, etc.). Among the benefits of AuthorIT are very clean and
> compact code in the HTML output, a database model that really enables
> multiple authors to work on the same project at the same time (despite
> marketing claims you may have heard, other tools DO NOT support this),
> and support for true single sourcing to multiple output formats (ditto
> re marketing claims). I'd definitely suggest it's worth a look.
>
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