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Subject:Re: let's see the patient's chart... From:Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> To:"Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Jan 2012 18:37:38 -0800
SVG is definitely the way to go. You would have to research the best
way to include them in your help files, because traditional CHM cannot
read them.
SVG has been around for years, but its usage so far has largely been
unsupported. This is changing with the advent of HTML5.
When a company I worked for moved to an XML documentation process, our
team created the images in Visio, saved to SVG, and set up a
publishing process to use the SVG in PDF while converting the SVG to a
PNG for web help.
If we built the same system today, I would harness HTML5 and a couple
of JavaScript libraries to render the SVG on outdated browsers.
-Tony
On 2012-01-05, at 2:13 PM, "Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- polycom -dot- com> wrote:
> McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
>
>> What I would LIKE to do is to make the flow diagram BE the
>> instructions, with each box and bump in the diagram containing one or
>> multiple links to help pages that explain the choices, the
>> implications, the reasons that this-or-that decision might be
>> better(best?) for this-or-that customer niche, etc. But, the customer
>> would just follow the decision paths of the diagram as her/his
>> "instructions" to get where s/he was going.
> <snip>
>> The other option is to just draw the charts in Visio or some-such, make
>> them into .png or .jpg pictures, import them into Flare, and make
>> regions of the picture clickable links.
>
> Ugh, no -- don't go down the path of converting those nice Visio vector graphics full of metadata into bitmap (raster) images. Visio offers much better options.
>
> It's been quite a while since I've done this kind of thing, so this is just an idea to look into, not a detailed solution. But I recall saving multipage Visio files (each containing a dozen or two flow charts, with jumps between them) as scalable vector graphics (SVGs). IIRC, that gave me a set of HTML pages, each containing an SVG flowchart and providing controls for zooming in/out, moving from page to page, etc.
>
> I created hyperlinks in Visio for the jumps that took you to a flow continuation on another page, and of course those worked in the HTML/SVG export. I seem to recall not being able to figure out a way, within Visio, to create links to other (non-Visio) destinations. But that could have been a failure on my part or a software limitation since eliminated. Or it could still be an issue that you have to address after the SVG export.
>
> HTH!
>
> Richard G. Combs
> Senior Technical Writer
> Polycom, Inc.
> richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
> 303-223-5111
> ------
> rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
> 303-903-6372
> ------
>
>
>
>
>
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