OT: Software recommendations

[Roger Shuttleworth]

Hello All

I just started a new job at a software company whose product is very GUI-intense. User assistance is crucial, and our legacy versions use online Help that opens in a separate browser window. Management seem to be very open to the idea of embedded help, etc. in upcoming versions, and they are very serious about good UI design - so I'm hoping I'll be able to promote embedded help in the future.

In the past the Help was  created in RoboHelp 7 and existed separately from any PDF output, but in the future I can see us also creating well-designed PDFs, single-sourcing the PDF and the Help, and maybe also training materials. There will also be about four software packages with different sets of features (so some form of inclusion/exclusion mechanism will be needed.

I'm looking for recommendations as to which software package(s) to use. My inclination is to get TCS2, single-source in FrameMaker, and then push to RH. I'm pretty savvy with structured FM (though not v.9.0).

Before I leap for TCS2, I wonder if there are other possibilities. We do not need XML as yet, though it may be a remote possibility down the road). I've also thought about using XML and the DITA-OT, but the PDF output is probably not good enough and there will be issues with file management in the absence of a content management system.

Any suggestions will be welcome. Thanks for your help.

Roger

Roger Shuttleworth
Technical Documentation
AV-BASE Systems Inc.
1000 Air Ontario Drive, Suite 200
London, Ontario
N5V 3S4
Canada
Tel. 519 691-0919 ext. 320
rshuttleworth at avbasesystems.com