setting up technical documentation workflow from scratch

[Yves Barbion]

Hi Jakobsen

As Wim Hooghwinkel has said: define your goals and requirements first, then
look at tools. What Wim means is: you need to define your content strategy,
and then design supporting information models. And that's where DITA may
come in handy, no need to start "from scratch" here.

Instead of looking at database publishing solutions, you may want to look at
(component) content management systems. Wim has already mentioned a couple
of them, but there are more, for example Bluestream XDocs etc.

I've written a white paper in which I list and discuss some of these tools.
Please contact me off-list if you wish to receive a copy.

If you wish to see an example of technical documentation which has been
generated from the same DITA-structured content, check this out:

   - PDF:
   http://www.nomadesk.com/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Nomadesk_getting_started_guide_final.pdf
   - WebHelp: http://www.nomadesk.com/webhelp/welcome.php
   - HTMLHelp (CHM): included in the product itself. Feel free to download
   and install a trial version to take a peek at it:

   http://www.nomadesk.com/index.php?id=partner_download&utm_source=scripto&utm_medium=afres

Cheers

-- 
Yves Barbion
www.scripto.nu

On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Studio Smalbro <studio at smalbro.dk> wrote:

>  I am about to author a small report on setting up a technical
> documentation workflow from scratch.
> I need to devise a setup where a group of author can write tech docs,
> another group maintain and translate the docs and publish them as pdf. It is
> vital that the process can be thought within a technogy which allows for
> later integration with publishing to web as well.
>
> I have taken a look at Woodwings serverbased solution which uses InDesign
> as publishing frontend, but I would like to see whether I can accomplish the
> same using FrameMaker. I suppose I must look for a kind of database drive
> solution where the authors write into a database.
>
> I have taken a look on a couple of database publishing solutions:
> Patternstream, Sabern, FrameMaker Server but some of these solutions looks
> strangely dated when one merely looks at their websites. Sabern uses product
> images from FrameMaker 5.5. Patternstream recommends in FrameMaker 8 in a
> news release dated 2007. Adobes documentation for FrameMaker Server seems to
> be non existent - even a tutorial links to some very quaint and useless
> course on a server not even belonging to Adobe.
>
> My question is: Am I looking in the wrong places? Can somebody reccommend
> products which will help me streamline the process?
>
> regards
> Jakobsen
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