RE: Creating one help system

["Giordano, Connie" <Connie -dot- Giordano -at- FMR -dot- COM>]

You could be right Sean,  I interpreted slightly differently than some folks
did, from the perspective of building and maintaining the project.  I have
one big project, with five macros that build the output.  To me it's all one
help system, and to our clients, they just get the right one when we
install. Then again, I have a small number of very large clients, so cutting
five installations CD's isn't much of an issue.

This process also eliminates the problem with references in TOC and Index,
because the build only compiles the topics you tell it to.  If a particular
topic isn't tagged for a particular build, none of the references show up in
the output.  

I've not been give the developer resources necessary to create
context-sensitive help for this particular product, which requires the
uncompiled html help output (Web help).  I can create map files til the cows
come home, but the developers don't have the time allotted to add it to
their code.  So I had to come up with another approach that would minimize
the headache of locating the information. It  does create some issues where
I need to have almost, but not quite identical, topics for certain
introductory sections, but it was the best I could come up with.  If anyone
has other solutions, I'd love to hear about them!

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Hower [mailto:hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com] 
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2003 11:48 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Creating one help system




------------------------
Connie Giordano wrote:
Robohelp allows you to tag topics and create different outputs based on how
you put those tags together.
------------------------

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?


--------------------------
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.
--------------------------
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.


********************************************
"And in the morning, I'm makin waffles." ~ Donkey
Sean Hower - tech writer
http://hokum.freehomepage.com



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