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Given the size of your printed documentation and preferred weapon (Word),
and even though the books are well structured, I think if would be next to
impossible to single-source, creating online help from the same files
without making changes to those files.
Firstly, I firmly believe (and experience has shown me) that single-sourcing
must be planned from the outset.
Consider that single-sourcing is not for everyone and all projects. I
recommend you start a separate documentation project for your online help.
Of course, using existing text snippets will save some work. Any updates,
however, would have to be done separately from the printed-book files.
The good news is that the separate document approach will give you a freer
reign in choosing your online tool.
All the best.
Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Graham Bridge [mailto:graham -dot- bridge -at- SESCOI -dot- FR]
>>>Subject: Single source documentation
>>>For the moment these two products are supported by paper only
>>>documentation (600 pages/2 volumes for CAM and 1600 pages/9
>>>volumes for
>>>Production Control). This documentation has been done with
>>>Word97 on a
>>>reasonably structured basis (well defined templates, macros, multiple
>>>files using automatically generated TOCs and indexes).
>>>
>>>We now want to (and have to) move on to On line Help, CD based
>>>documentation, Web based documentation - and we have to maintain the
>>>paper documentation.
>>>
>>>My question is, is there a 'perfect' product which will allow us to
>>>produce all these different document formats without giving
>>>us any great
>>>maintenance headaches, i.e. we update one source and this generates
>>>updating in the other media sources.
>>>
>>>Another point of importance is that I really do prefer that
>>>we stay with
>>>Word as the source of the paper document, although this is not an
>>>irrevocable rule - but I will be very reluctant.
