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I'm canvassing for rumors/experiences/opinions/truths about single-source
formatted documents and html. This like some search for the holy grail,
where the grail is WYSIWYG print/html single source authoring environment.
I don't want to limit my search to Windows platform--my research must
include Unix.
My shop uses WinWord to create documents, but the HTML that WinWord
produces is flabby and hard to maintain (in my humble experience/opinion).
I have a vague notion (from reading the ads) that Help authoring now
incorporates html help. I haven't worked in recent versions of RoboHelp or
Doc-to-Help or HTML Help, but I have a bad feeling that they still run off
of RTF. RTF ditches a lot of formatting compared to Word's native format,
does it not? Thus, even if these authoring tools do indeed produce HTML
from Word docs, it doesn't let me do true WYSIWYG using Word as the
authoring tool. I could learn to work with this limitation, but can't I
just have it all??
Adobe FrameMaker (Unix, Win) comes up all the time in my search for a
better tool. Last time I looked at it closely (before Adobe acquired it)
they were touting the new HTML authoring capabilities. (They also had a
proprietary viewer kind of thing that let you distribute immutable
Frame-originated docs. I imagine this has been superceded by Acrobat).
But how is Frame for single-sourced wysiwyg print and HTML authoring?
Macromedia Dreamweaver rates very highly with some website developers as a
wysiwyg html authoring tool, but I haven't ever heard of it having affinity
for binaries of tools designed for print production. Likewise Allaire
HomeSite, their latest beta is giving wysiwyg tools, but no word on
importing formatted text.
Interleaf? Do they have single-source tools, and Wysiwyg?
Thanks a bunch in advance. I'll summarize to the list if turnout is
informative.
