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.
Subject:Re: Feasibility of WinWord for a large pjt From:Martyn Thirlway <thirlwaym -at- USOFT -dot- NL> Date:Wed, 8 May 1996 08:58:00 PDT
Incidentally, apologies for always joining after evryone else, but being in
Europe we get our mail after all the people in USA and Canada have had their
discussions and gone to bed...
As someone else has already said, don't use the Word master document
feature...
I use WexTech Systems' DocToHelp for large manuals, with each chapter in a
separate file, and the front and back matter, and toc and index in the main
file. D2H looks after the toc and index for you, and I have added some extra
processing via WordBasic macros to tweak the rtf files before making the
help.
The original project was published using Ventura, with the source being
written in flat text format, with tags. After writing a conversion macro to
take the tags and use them to apply Word styles, the whole project is now in
Word 6.
The resulting DOC files, with some preprocessing macros, D2H, and
post-processing macros now provide the manual, Windows 3.x help, and Windows
'95 help. The text in all three differs for various reasons (some text in
the book does not belong in help and vice versa, and W'95 help uses some of
the newer features such as the button macro and embedded graphics), but this
is all handled by the combination of color and style codes (D2H) and style
codes (my macros).
Screenshots are made using Ctrl-PrtScr, and edited if necessary using Paint
or Paint Shop Pro. They are then just copied and pasted directly into Word
(D2H converts them to WMF files automatically when creating the RTF files).
WexTech also provide Quicture and SmoothScaling to help with bitmap
handling, but I have not tried them yet.
I don't work for WexTech, but I do find D2H does most of the graft, and
provides various places in the conversion process for one to link in one's
own processing. I have even been able to adapt my post-processing macros to
create help files from files created using Japenese W4W.
Martyn Thirlway
thirlwaym -at- usoft -dot- nl
[What more can I say?]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Post Message: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Get Commands: LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU with "help" in body.
Unsubscribe: LISTSERV -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU with "signoff TECHWR-L"
Listowner: ejray -at- ionet -dot- net
