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Thanks Bee, that backs up my first impressions: AEM is a big solution
to a much bigger problem than ours.
On the "actual satisfied tech writers": I wasn't looking so much for
happy-user testimonials as signs of activity, such as questions being
asked and answered; "yeah, we needed to do that and here's how we got
it to work;' and experiences with installation, customization, support
and the user documentation.
Other Adobe products have active users on multiple forums asking and
answering questions. Ask questions about Frame or Acrobat and Google
will likely turn up dozens or hundreds of hits. With XML Doc for AEM
there is no impression of a thriving community, though perhaps there's
a closed forum that the search engines don't see.
--- Stuart
----- Original Message -----
I used AEM at Cisco. It is complex, but powerful and endlessly
configurable. I suspect it exceeds your needs -- it's used there for
its very large CMSs.Â
Google is a DITA-free zone (yay!), but I think the reason you're not
finding much from "actual satisfied tech writers" is that there's
nothing to be satisfied about - it's an enterprise decision, writers
either take it or leave it (I left it). There's not much difference in
the processes. (I used XMetaL too, DITA is DITA.)Â
The processes are essentially the same, but AEM is a very-big-business
tool, and your company probably isn't. The output is a function of
customization by information architects, which is possible with either
system, and as you probably know, it isn't simple.Â
I love Adobe products, but for what you're describing, I'd recommend
Oxygen.Â
HTH.
Bee
On Thursday, September 13, 2018 2:07 AM, Stuart Burnfield wrote:
Does anyone have practical experience with either of these:
ÂÂÂ * Oxygen WebHelp for DITA [1]
ÂÂÂ * Adobe Experience Manager (specifically, XML Documentation
solution
for Adobe Experience Manager [2])
We already use Oxygen to edit DITA source and are looking for a
reasonably simple way to output user docs for multiple
products/versions/languages. The end result will be a pubs library
that customers can access through a browser. Integration with GitHub
and Jira would be a plus.
We expect the setup and customization to require some effort from
specialists and developers, but once it's up and running TWs should be
able to generate and publish output with a few clicks and little need
for support.
These are fairly new, fairly niche products without much of a track
record. Oxygen WebHelp looks promising, and has at least a few active
users. It's a little concerning that Google turns up few references to
XML Doc for AEM from actual satisfied tech writers; all of the buzz
comes from Adobe or Adobe resellers or industry pundits who thought
the demo / white paper looked cool.
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