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Subject:Use of ML Tagged Docs on PC? From:"Montgomery, Kevin" <kmontgomery -at- LOGICON -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 9 Jun 1995 10:09:58 PST
Fellow TWs, TCs, TCSs, et al. - I would appreciate some thoughts and
advice on a problem concerning mainframe-generated documents and their
effective viewing and use on a PC.
My group creates and maintains documentation for a large military
accounting system. That documentation includes user manuals, software
detail designs, databank designs, and the like. Documents are generated on
the mainframe by an automatic system that reads a control file to
selectively combine bits of text from databases with other text files
stored on a library disk. (Note that both our documentation group and our
customers have access to the mainframe files, databases, and software.)
The process yields a text file tagged with a proprietary markup language
loosely similar to SGML. We download the mainframe files to a PC and run
them through a program that interprets the markup coding to create an RTF
file, which it then converts to a Word for Windows file. We print the
finished documents and deliver paper copies to our customer.
Here's where I want some advise. Our customer wants to access our
documents online on a PC by putting them on CD-ROM. They appear to be
unaware of the difficulties associated with trying to navigate documents
online that were designed for hardcopy, e.g., lack of contextual
referencing and no hypertext linking. Also, it seems rather wasteful to
convert the mainframe ML-encoded files to Word just to have them viewed
online.
Would anyone be willing to comment on the use of an SGML or HTML viewer to
view the encoded text files directly on either a PC or on the mainframe
(assuming conversion from the proprietary markup language to a standard
language)? How about printing from that SGML or HTML viewer? What about
adding navigation aids to the text file, then converting to RTF and using
some kind of online help tool? We want to consider any approaches that
will make our documents easier for our customers to use.
Please respond selectively to me or to the list, depending on how
interested you think the group will be in your response. Thanks!
-Kevin Montgomery, San Diego
kmontgomery -at- logicon -dot- com
