TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Kind of funky to have to map application IDs to hard-coded URL strings
instead of tags, but I've done that before.
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 3:05 PM, Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> wrote:
> Do you do use context-sensitive help calls with that? If so, how did
> you implement them?
>
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 2:39 PM, Richard Hamilton <dick -at- rlhamilton -dot- net> wrote:
>> We use the K15t plugins, though in a different context. We have authors who write in Confluence, then we export DocBook with the Scroll exporter and generate books and ebooks from the DocBook.
>>
>> I have found the DocBook exporter to be solid and flexible, and it generates good DocBook. It probably covers all the things you're likely to want in a help system, though we added a bit of supplementary markup that we then convert to DocBook after export (that's for epigraphs, and some details of indexing that go beyond what most folks need). We also do a little bit of post-processing. That's not because of problems with the exporter; rather, Confluence tends to add in weird stuff (like subtle text color changes and inconsistently marked up paragraph breaks) that Scroll can't differentiate from legitimate markup. That leads to some unexpected, though valid, DocBook markup, which we strip out.
>>
>> Last time I checked, pricing was $200 for a 10 user license.
>>
>> Hope that helps,
>> Richard Hamilton
>> -------
>> XML Press
>> XML for Technical Communicators
>> http://xmlpress.net
>> hamilton -at- xmlpress -dot- net
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 6, 2015, at 14:16, Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, is that how k15t handles webhelp output? With the DocBook toolchain? The DocBook toolchain is pretty solid if you want to work with it. You seem like someone who could bend it to his will, Robert. You could get Bob Stayton's DocBook XSL book, he's the top guy for that. He has a thorough website for that, too.
>>>
>>> I recently heard from someone who uses them that the k15t Confluence tech pubs plugins are pretty workable for a tech pubs workflow but I haven't used them. Just using plain Confluence for ordinary technical publications seems overly messy to me. As far as I can see, k15t pretty much owns the market for that.
>>>
>>> I can think of a couple more ways you might go to get webhelp out of Confluence, but I think it would require more custom coding. What is the pricing like on the k15t plugins?
>>>
>>> Mark Giffin
>>> Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.
>>> http://markgiffin.com/
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/6/2015 1:18 PM, Robert Lauriston wrote:
>>>> A year ago I researched options for generating web help from content
>>>> in Confluence, and the only really usable solution I found was K15t's
>>>> DocBook Exporter plus the free DocBook+WebHelp.
>>>>
>>>> Has anyone found a better solution?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Doc-To-Help: The Quickest Way to Author and Publish Online Help, Policy & Procedure Guides, eBooks, and more using Microsoft Word | http://bit.ly/doctohelp2015
