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A while back, I wrote to techwr-l asking whether anyone was aware of some
reasonably objective hands-on reviews of the various help-authoring tools
that were available. Nobody came up with a good third-party review article,
but I did collect the following information that should prove interesting to
techwhirlers:
Weisner Associates is a strong advocate of using a tool such as Dreamweaver
to develop help systems, and in fact is ready to release (in May) a set of
tools that turn Dreamweaver into : http://www.devahelp.com
Paul Hanson has graciously agreed to provide a PDF of the white paper he
produced ca. 1999 on this topic; it's slightly out of date with respect to
the current versions, but provides a useful collection of data on the
subject and a good example of the thought process behind making a
recommendation. Contact Paul directly to obtain a copy: phanson -at- quintrex -dot- com
John Garison reports: "I'm doing a 30-minute session on my groups'
experience [with using Dreamweaver to generate help] in the process at STC -
a Wednesday 11:30 - Noon Bleeding Edge session." (The actual session begins
at 10:30, and it's in the TT stream of sessions.)
Thanks to Scott DeLoach, John Garison, Deidre Guy, Paul Hanson, Michele
Marques, and Ben Weisner for their input.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"I vowed [that] if I complained about things more than three times, I had to
do something about it."--Jon Shear
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
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