RE: Converting to content sensitive documentation

Subject: RE: Converting to content sensitive documentation
From: Slager Timothy J <Timothy -dot- Slager -at- dematic -dot- com>
To: Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2016 00:12:44 +0000

My experience with FrameMaker to WebWorks ePub is similar to Robert's. I was new to both tools, and the combination worked great. Support from WebWorks was also tops. I'd go with their newer Reverb help format.

tims

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+timothy -dot- slager=dematic -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2016 6:04 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Converting to content sensitive documentation

If it's implemented correctly, context-sensitive help is not much work for engineering. One possible exception is web UIs, which if designed in certain ways can make "context" hard to define.

I switched from FrameMaker + RoboHelp to FrameMaker + WebWorks ePublisherPro at my last job. The latter was a very nice combination.
Unstructured FrameMaker is great for PDFs and ePP was maybe the best help generation tool I've used.

I was surprised, since I'd vowed never to use WebWorks again after a horible experience with them around ten years ago that ended up with my company dumping them in favor of MIF2Go.

On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Wroblewski, Victoria <victoria -dot- wroblewski -at- necect -dot- com> wrote:
> You may even want to question why they want context sensitive help. If you had experience with it 9 years ago, context sensitive help really hasn't changed that much, because most people have moved on from it. Just too complicated to produce, too buggy, and pretty much everyone knows how to use a "search" in any basic, compiled help format without the complexity of context sensitive. And unless they have been maintaining their application on the engineering side to support it, it's a lot of work for engineering, also, to get it set up (and it could be possible they don't know this yet).
>
> We do unstructured Frame to RoboHelp. Still as buggy as it ever was for context sensitive help and things need to be manually fixed, not totally automatic. We've been wanting to move away from it for years.
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Follow-Ups:

References:
Converting to content sensitive documentation: From: Caruso, Margaret
RE: Converting to content sensitive documentation: From: Wroblewski, Victoria
Re: Converting to content sensitive documentation: From: Robert Lauriston

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