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Subject:Electronic help files/manuals HTML Help or PDF? From:"Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 31 Jan 2003 09:47:42 -0500
Bethany Rusbasan wonders: <<We have been using Forehelp Premier 4 to create
the HTML-Help. Context-sensitive help is used. Now that Forehelp is gone the
need to switch to another help authoring tool is upon us.>>
Not really. So long as you don't upgrade your operating systems so much that
ForeHelp no longer works, you can keep using the software productively for
years to come. (Speaking as someone who's been using Word 97 for roughly 5
years now and who feels no need to upgrade... <g> Well, I may upgrade to
Word 2000 for additional stability, but not feeling any urgent need.)
<<A debate is taking place on whether we should continue with HTML-help or
switch to PDF.>>
There shouldn't be any debate. You mentioned that you're using
context-sensitive help (as you should be) and you simply can't do that
easily or elegantly with PDF. Stick with ForeHelp and HTML Help.
<<I would like to know what are the pros of PDFs. How searchable is it? Is
it at searchable as HTML-help? Any pros and cons of both HTML-Help and PDF
is appreciated.>>
PDF is at least as searchable as HTML Help. Possibly better, actually.
Acrobat lets you use "stemming", "sounds like", "proximity", and a thesaurus
to enhance searching; I don't think I've seen any of these for HTML Help. My
take on this: If you truly believe your customers will be happy to print
their own user manuals, at roughly twice the cost of buying a printed manual
from you, then ship the user manuals as PDF. If not, print your own manuals.
In either case, keep the HTML Help.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer
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