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Subject:Re: Windows Help/Future Demand From:Jeff Jungblut <jeffmj -at- CRASH -dot- CTS -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 11 Jan 1994 17:16:13 GMT
In Article <ECS9401111831A -at- acec -dot- com>, Matthew Wong <wong -at- acec -dot- com> wrote:
>For those of you on the list who are developing the help facility for Windows
>applications I would like to hear from you about:
>1. Which of the two development routes would you recommend: (a) develop the
>RTF file with FrameMaker and then exeute the help compiler, or (b) use a
>Windows help authoring tool.
From personal experience, I would recommend using FrameMaker or Word for
Windows to create the RTF files. I tried a number of shareware help
authoring tools, including an early demo version of Help Magician, and I
found that they were all more trouble than they were worth for the specific
project I was working on.
>2. What Windows help authoring tool would you recommend: (a) RoboHelp, (b)
>Doc-to-Help, (c) Help Magician, and what are your reasons for
>recommending/discouraging them.
I haven't seen Doc-to-Help or the commercial version of Help Magician. An
article I read in one of the Windows magazines gave RoboHelp a great review.
>3. How are you presently developing your Windows help ?
I'm creating them in Word 5.1a on a Mac, then copying them to the Windows
machine for compilation and testing. I'm concurrently doing a Mac version
of the help file based on the same RTF files using QuickHelp on the Mac.
This may seem like a roundabout way of doing things, but I'm more
comfortable working on the Mac and writing macros in QuicKeys than using
Word for Windows and learning WordBasic. (I've used Word for Mac and
QuicKeys for years and don't have the time allotted in this project to learn
WordBasic.)
____________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Jungblut Tecnhical Documentation Group
jeffmj -at- crash -dot- cts -dot- com Jostens Learning Corporation, San Diego
