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Bill Lawrence asks:
So, out of curiosity, how many folks on the list are doing single-source
documentation using XML or any other technology?
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We are in a couple of different instances.
In the first case, I used RoboHelp to create online help for six applications that were built from a handful of core functions. I documented each function, leaving out references to individual applications and instead referring to the product family, then used conditional tags to build the help for each application. This has proven VERY effective for my situation as I've already had to make several updates that would have been a major pain if I had written the same thing six times. I did, however, include about 3 pages for each individual application (again using conditional tags) that provided overview-type info. This approach required rethinking how I wrote documentation so that it could be reused. It also required a bit of planning so that I did not forget to include anything. The cool thing is that as my company comes out with new applications, creating the help for them is as easy as creating a new conditional tag.
In the second case (different product family), we're using XML for the navigation pane in our web-based help (TOC, Index, and Glossary). Because we have no way of knowing what combination of product family, products, and even individual functions a user might end up with, we created a set of attributes that can be called on to output the correct TOC, Index, and glossary entries based on whatever the user happens to have installed on their computer (or at least that's the plan). The target pages are all html pages that cover form-level information. For field-level information, we're using meta data descriptons that are tied to each object and displayed in bubble help.
In a third case, I'm planning to switch my glossaries on my Web site over to a single XML file, and using xslt and javascript to pull terms out of the xml fle to create the various glossaries and to create the popups I use. I haven't done this yet mostly because I haven't had the time (other stuff to do). But it is a plan I have.
Now, when you look at this, the first thing you probably notice is that the output media is all the same (html) what gets displayed (the content) changes based on some JavaScripting.
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