OT: Questions about a wiki

[Bill Nilson]

>I have a potential client who (that for reasons aren't pertinent here)


> is insistent that the User Manual be in a Wiki.  I am working through a


> professional and carefully worded response to this demand, including


> pros and cons based on what their requirements are, what they want to do with


> the manual, the skills level of their SMEs,  etc.


Tammy, 

I went through this with a client about two years ago who used the Confluence Wiki extensively within their organization and insisted on using it for documentation delivery. The main trade-off was that the PDF output was not configurable and unacceptable for customer consumption. Likewise, the formatting control for online presentation was OK but not optimal. I don't know whether their capabilty has improved in more recent versions. If your customer has a PDF/print requirement and insists on using the Wiki you may want to try saving as XML and postprocessing the output. Or, if there is no requirement for collaborative editing from other parts of the organization and you want to use FrameMaker as your repository, I noticed that Webworks ePublisher can output to the Confluence wiki format. 


G.L.


-Bill


-----Original Message-----

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com

[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Spectrum

Writing

Sent: Wednesday, January 06, 2010 3:29 PM

To: framers at lists.frameusers.com; Free Framers

Subject: OT: Questions about a wiki


All, There are so many tech savvy gearheads/gurus on these lists, I figured

it would be great place to post such a question.


I have a potential client who (that for reasons aren't pertinent here)

is insistent that the User Manual be in a Wiki.  I am working through a

professional and carefully worded response to this demand, including

pros and cons based on what their requirements are, what they want to do with

the manual, the skills level of their SMEs,  etc. That said, I want to

thoroughly investigate the following option as I formulate my response -


Have you ever developed content in Word (based on a Word template),

saved the Word document as an HTML file, and then uploaded the file into a

Wiki? Or have you done something similar outside of a Wiki using a different

approach with other tools, such as FM and MIF2GO? Basically, a way to

develop outside of a Wiki and then convert the content to HTML files and

then upload the content to the Wiki.