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: Testing of Online Help Links From:Mark Baker <mbaker -at- OMNIMARK -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 10 Feb 1998 16:16:35 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Robyn Faulkner
Subject: Testing of Online Help Links
>I'm interested to hear what processes other companies use to test the
>context-sensitive links in online helps systems. The last help I created
>(in RoboHELP 4.0) had about 600 links to the application.
By far the best way to manage links in any large scale web or help system is
to avoid the testing problem altogether by generating all of your links from
known good data.
There are a couple of ways to do this:
You can write your information in XML or SGML and process this information
to create your help file, including the links.
You can store XML or SGML components in a database and use the database
relationships to build your links.
In either case the key is that you build your links on output from stored
data using a process that ensures all links are correct as they are created.