RE: What tools to buy?

["Fred Ridder" <docudoc -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Well, according to Adobe, there *will* be a new version of RoboHelp
in 2007, and I'm sure the upgrade will not be free.

You might want to buy licenses to the online edition of "The Chicago
Manual of Style".

But beyond that, any recommendations that most people might make
(e.g. FrameMaker or some other non-Word authorint tool or some
different HAT) should be treated as strategic decisions that need to
be formally planned and budgeted for rather than made as an
off-the-cuff decision in an annual buget renewal process. Few
companies do a proper job of planning the transition to a new set of
tools, and common results are increased stress among staffers,
a protracted transition period, missed deliverables deadlines, and even
failure to completely adopt the new tool(s).  When our pubs group
planned our migration from Word to FrameMaker (which started
before we were acquired by Intel), I *thought* we had done a
pretty good plan, but 8 years down the road there were still a
couple of writers who writing anfd maintaning a handful of documents
using 11-year templates developed for Word 95.

My opinions only; I don't speak for Intel.
Fred Ridder
Intel
Parsippany, NJ