OT: Software recommendations

[Scott Prentice]

Hi Roger...

Keep in mind that the DITA-OT and FrameMaker are not mutually exclusive. 
You can use the OT to generate your HTML output, but still use FM for 
authoring and PDF publishing. It's a bit of work to tweak the OT for 
HTML .. but not too bad .. tweaking the OT for PDF output (especially if 
you're looking for something comparable to FM's PDF) is a *lot* of work. 
I'd go with TCS2 so that you've got all of the bases covered, and as 
time permits, experiment with other options that may free you from 
proprietary processing where appropriate.

Cheers,

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com
+1.415.485.1892



Roger Shuttleworth wrote:
> 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
>
>