RE: On-line vs. Print (WAS: Of myth and reality)

[quills -at- airmail -dot- net]

I have always maintained that to single-source for online help and 
printed documentation, you have to chunk your data. In other words, 
you have to have such a fine granulation of data, and a means of 
identification to pull it out that you are only writing small pieces 
of information. This can be achieved if you use something like SGML 
or XML, however, it also means that to do it effectively, and 
efficiently, you have to spend a lot of time up front designing your 
structure to that the data chunks can be small enough, and able to 
identify chunks that appear in one or more purposed documents.

Just writing a book and pouring it into a help file is not the same. 
You end up spending a lot more time to setup the system, and then you 
have to be very careful when you alter the data.

Scott

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