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Subject:RE: Creating one help system From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 10 Jan 2003 08:47:42 -0800 (PST)
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Connie Giordano wrote:
Robohelp allows you to tag topics and create different outputs based on how you put those tags together.
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But it sounds like you're still creating several different help files, even though it's all coming from one project. Is that right? Didn't the original poster want to avoid multiple help files?
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Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Case in point: I am trying to figure out how a
particular does something (or even if it can do that). I don't know where to start. I'm not at a dialog box, wondering how to use it. So I have to look in the index or the ToC to see if I can find a clue on where to start.
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But if the particular isn't in the interface in the first place, you wouldn't wonder how it's working because you wouldn't know about it.....unless I'm just not getting the point you're trying to make, it is early Friday morning after all.....
Geoff, our help covers features that users may or may not have depending on what they've purchased and their access rights. I don't _believe_ that anyone has ever read the help and then campaigned to purchase a feature that they didn't have but was in the help. Because people can mix-and-match forms, tabs and fields (depending on purchase and access rights) it's nearly impossible to create the kind of comment/cross reference you mentioned (in our case). It's an interesting problem, and it's one that I have been mulling over and over to try to solve. My own suggestion (and yours), about context sensitive help, would be the quickest way to take care of it, but then that would probably limit the help reference information. And then what about TOC and index entries.......mmmmmmm.
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"And in the morning, I'm makin waffles." ~ Donkey
Sean Hower - tech writer http://hokum.freehomepage.com
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