Re: Converting to content sensitive documentation

[Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>]

If it's implemented correctly, context-sensitive help is not much work
for engineering. One possible exception is web UIs, which if designed
in certain ways can make "context" hard to define.

I switched from FrameMaker + RoboHelp to FrameMaker + WebWorks
ePublisherPro at my last job. The latter was a very nice combination.
Unstructured FrameMaker is great for PDFs and ePP was maybe the best
help generation tool I've used.

I was surprised, since I'd vowed never to use WebWorks again after a
horible experience with them around ten years ago that ended up with
my company dumping them in favor of MIF2Go.

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Wroblewski, Victoria
<victoria -dot- wroblewski -at- necect -dot- com> wrote:
> You may even want to question why they want context sensitive help.  If you had experience with it 9 years ago, context sensitive help really hasn't changed that much, because most people have moved on from it.  Just too complicated to produce, too buggy, and pretty much everyone knows how to use a "search" in any basic, compiled help format without the complexity of context sensitive.  And unless they have been maintaining their application on the engineering side to support it, it's a lot of work for engineering, also, to get it set up (and it could be possible they don't know this yet).
>
> We do unstructured Frame to RoboHelp. Still as buggy as it ever was for context sensitive help and things need to be manually fixed, not totally automatic.  We've been wanting to move away from it for years.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Visit TechWhirl for the latest on content technology, content strategy and content development | http://techwhirl.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com


Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.

Looking for articles on Technical Communications?  Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.com

Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions?  Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives