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However, our company was unable to use context-sensitive help. Blue-Sky
bluntly told us that they don't support PowerBuilder applications. I've
heard of other companies that were able to devote a lot of developer time to
forcing RoboHELP context-sensitive help to work with PowerBuilder, but in my
company all online help and context-sensitive help must be developed solely
by the tech writer. (If anyone has been able to create context-sensitive
help with RoboHELP and PowerBuilder, *without* developer assistance, please
contact me offline.)
Second, our clients are not always PC literate. Our products are for
attorneys and paralegals. Most attorneys have told us they prefer books to
online doc. They are used to sifting through tomes and always print the
online help, anyway. Feedback from our help desk has told us that many
clients don't even know the online help exists! Feedback from our trainers
strongly suggests that it's difficult enough to train the clients on
automating their real estate closing transactions, much less train them to
use the online help because it is *one more* piece of software! Some of our
clients aren't even connected to the Internet, yet! Our clients run the
gamut from needing basic Windows training while having heavy real estate
closing experience to being new to the industry and being Windows/PC savvy.
You get the point.
Our project manager is now requiring the trainers to include online help
training to cut down on support costs. Our programmers are redesigning our
application to be more user friendly. My job is to provide documentation
that will quickly and easily help the clients use the application, so that
they don't call the help desk every few minutes. I created a separate online
help file for Frequently Asked Questions that is linked to the main online
help file.
I thank you for your advice and welcome all suggestions.
Susana Rosende
Senior Technical Writer
Attorneys' Title Insurance Fund
Orlando, FL
SRosende -at- thefund -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: Geoff Hart [mailto:Geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA]
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 1999 1:05 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Reformat PDF for online info./don't replace WinHelp!
Susana Rosende is <<...opting to make our pdf files available
from our FTP site, and considering dropping HAT-created
online help for an online manual>>
Pardon my bluntness, but that's generally a very bad idea
from the user's perspective. PDF currently doesn't directly
support context-sensitive links to the correct page of the
manual; you'll have to get your developers to do some
programming to create links that open the correct help page
when someone clicks the help button in a specific dialog box.
(This isn't rocket science, but neither is it as elegant as the
current WinHelp model, which provides this support directly
and simply.)
As well, if the PDF file is identical to the printed version of
your manual, it will be very difficult to read and use on the
computer screen. I've yet to see a PDF manual that was
designed so that it worked well onscreen; most still must be
printed, and that eliminates most of the advantage of having
the manual available online (e.g., fast searches). It's certainly
possible to produce a PDF manual that can be used easily
online, but you're going to have to redesign it to fit on the
screen, to use larger (thus more legible) fonts, and to include
a useful index with hyperlinks to the correct pages (since the built-
in search tools are inadequate, and will remain inadequate until
someone develops a search tool that understands context).
