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Subject:Re: Paper Manual to Online Help - where to start? From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- oddpost -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 25 May 2004 19:18:47 -0700 (PDT)
Updating in RoboHelp would be rather more of a chore than I think you are prepared for.
How about *this* for "economical"...convert the manuals to OpenOffice.org and save to .pdf. Updates would be to the original OpenOffice files, with new versions exported to .pdf as required.
One virtue this possesses--besides the *free* aspect of OpenOffice.org--is that its native file format is XML. Thus, once you have the docs cleanly in OpenOffice, if need be you could fairly easily convert them to just about anything you liked by using XSLT.
Thus, you'd be building a considerable amount of "future proofing" in the process.
David
-----Original Message from suzy -dot- davis -at- doi -dot- vic -dot- gov -dot- au-----
Thank you to David, Mike O, Suzanne, Felice, Bill and Kevin for the advice
Firstly, sorry I forgot to mention that the manuals are currently in Word
XP, and there is budget to pay for software - I think he's just trying
prove that he's a frugal project manager.
I personally liked the PDF idea, but when I put it to my client he agreed
that it was a great one-off solution, but was outlined that he was hoping
for a solution that would easily be updateable by the users.
The staff here are not extensive Word users, and while they could open the
manuals and update or add a procedure, they probably wouldn't apply the
appropriate styles. Will the updating be any simpler in RoboHelp or
DocToHelp? After this update and conversion to online help, the
paper-based manuals will be discontinued.
thanks in advance
Suzy
Suzy Davis
Technical Writer/VBA Developer
Create Space Pty Ltd
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