TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I've used AuthorIt for a couple of projects. It was one of the cheapest ways
to build a help file (other than the barest of bones winhelp workshop). The
object model that they use is very interesting and has a lot of potential.
I was able to build a help file without too much difficulty, but I did find
AuthorIt to be a little hard to use for writing from scratch. The overhead
of adding each topic as an object took some time. I ended up writing in
Frame for the manual and then importing the manual into AuthorIt. That
created some other issues. If you are going to be able to reuse the
information for additional projects, the overhead may be worth the effort.
It does output to Word and you can work on the help files with Winhelp
Workshop, so the file format it isn't really "too" proprietary. You can get
the information in and out of other formats.
So, I've been a little bit disappointed, but I'm continuing to play around
with it because I think it will really prove beneficial with a project I'm
working on currently. So far I have maybe 30-40 hours working with it and I
don't think that is really a fair amount of time to make a final decision.
For Cathy,
I bought this for an independent project, but I'm am using my own experience
to evaluate it for possible inclusion into my day job. I think it has a lot
of potential, especially if the object model makes sense for your situation.
Tom Johnson
Technical Writer
Elk Rapids Engineering/Star Cutter Company
231-264-5661 voice
231-264-5663 fax
Work johnsont -at- starcutter -dot- com
Personal thomasj -at- freeway -dot- net
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Learn about tools and technologies for user assistance developers at
The Help Technology Conference, August 21-24 in Boston, MA
Details and online registration at http://www.SolutionsEvents.com
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
