RE: Single Sourcing

Subject: RE: Single Sourcing
From: "Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2001 15:19:08 -0600

I single source from FM using Mif2Go. There probably isn't much
difference between that and WWP, except:

(1) I understand that it _might_ be more complex to configure WWP.

(2) Mif2Go is rather cryptic in its documentation (but very powerful in
what you get even with just the default settings).

(3) I find the flexibility and output of Mif2Go to be good. (I add
special topic tags and other things that I then use later.)

(4) Tech support was great from Mif2Go for the things I was doing.

(5) Mif2Go was much cheaper.

(6) I like its output formats. Even though I'm using it primarily for an
HTML online system, I've been able to use it to create RTF files that
reviewers could access and review. Finally, a clean and faithful RTF
filter from FM!

My project uses the HTML output not only of Mif2Go, but also of Doxygen
(which extracts things from source code). My requirements necessitated
me writing my own tools in Perl to wrap these various min-HTML systems
into a single system. I've had the TOC portion done for awhile, but had
to back out Javascript solutions in favor of HTML page swapping for
expanding/contracting book icons in the navigation pane. Cheap, but
effective (and cross-browser).

I recently completed a Perl indexing tool for the system. Presently,
Mif2Go only exports FM index tokens to the MS HTML Help generated
output. I've requested and may get access to these index tokens through
other means in other formats; Mif2Go seemed really interested in my
suggestions.

We use IXGen in FM, so have some pretty decent indexing going on
already. If all I had were FM books, I could create an index using FM
master books and Mif2Go-ing the master index file. Again, my
requirements include non-Mif2Go generated HTML pages

Hence, components of my single-sourcing solution include home-grown Perl
tools. These tools would still be needed even if I used WWP.

Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Cédric Simard [mailto:cedricns -at- hotmail -dot- com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 7:11 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Single Sourcing


> This year, I've been developping and implementing a single source
> documentation strategy in my company, using FrameMaker and WWP.
>
> I'd like to hear about people using other tools/solutions, in
> order to benchmark them.

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