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Sarah, as David says, I was stuck with print manuals. I'm not sure a
FrameMaker solution lends itself to customer service creating the manuals,
but I was able to create them fairly easily.
Some chapters in the book didn't change at all.
Some chapters (that referenced optional features) contained conditional
text named for that feature.
Some chapters that were specific to optional modules didn't appear in the
book unless the feature was ordered by the customer.
After a few false starts and some excruciatingly BAD mistakes with naming
the text conditions and chapters, I got the hang of it and it was a good
solution. Not sure if it would work for a high-sales-volume product as
well, but I liked it.
Anne
On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Sarah Blake <sarah -dot- blake -at- arieso -dot- com> wrote:
> > The key is to make the documentation sufficiently integrated into the
> software, automatically configuring like any other aspect of the module,
> such as library or database requirements.
>
> That's what I was thinking, but I don't have the technical background to
> know how difficult it is or what tools lend themselves to this kind of
> dev/product integration. Obviously I can learn the skills necessary, I
> just need a starter for ten :)
>
> Anne: is this the sort of thing you achieved with your FrameMaker books?
>
> Sarah
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Writer Tip: Create 10 different outputs with Doc-To-Help -- including Mobile and EPUB.
