RE: merging separate help systems in InterHelp?

[jgarison -at- ide -dot- com]

Gee, Anne, this sounds awfully familiar!! I was the doc manager at Centra
when they came out with their online teaching application, and I had to do
just what you're talking about. However, this was 6 years ago and there were
no tools ....

I haven't used ForeHelp in over a year (we went to Dreamweaver), but I think
the real question is WHY? Why do you want to merge the two files together?
When I was faced with the dual audience dilemma, I decided to keep the two
help systems separate. This allows search engines (yes, I found one that
long ago!) to search only the help that is germane to the specific audience.
Sure, there are some files/images/etc. that are common - we created a Common
directory that was shipped with both Teacher and Student help. 

It actually made things a lot easier to do it that way.

Just my 2¢,

John

John Garison
Documentation Manager
IDe
150 Baker Avenue Extension
Concord, MA 01742

Voice: 978-402-2907
Fax:    978-318-9376
http://www.ide.com






-----Original Message-----
From: Wrdfinesse -at- aol -dot- com [mailto:Wrdfinesse -at- aol -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 4:25 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: merging separate help systems in InterHelp?


(cross-posted to techwr-l and techcomm-discuss)

Hi all.  Quick question ...

I'm using ForeHelp Premier to generate an InterHelp <quote> cross-platform
browser-independent</quote> OLH for a web application.  (Please don't start
a tool war here, or use this as a launching point to discuss the relative
merits of .xml ...)

The web app is for a collaborative conferencing product; depending upon
which role you're in (a conference presenter or a conference attendee), you
see different things and have access to different pieces of functionality.
I've been asked if I can write two help systems - one from the presenter
point of view, one from the attendee point of view.

Of course, I can do that.  The question - has anyone successfully merged two
help systems into a single help project using ForeHelp and outputting
InterHelp?  Such that a subset of information is only available when certain
conditions are met?  (I'm outputting .shtml files, so this can all be
"metaphoricalized" based on conditions.)

According to the documentation (yeah, I RTFM ... but who's gonna believe the
docs??) it can be done.  The doc gives steps for doing this, but doesn't
really explain <b>how</b> it will work.  I'd rather not spend a lot of
bandwidth prototyping, nor do I want to subject my very small and horribly
overworked dev team to a lot of experimentation, so I'm going to the expert
panel - all you whirlers.

Any insight you can provide will be great.

Technical detail for those who need it ... I'm using ForeHelp 5.0.0 on a
Win2000 box.  The product will be "servered" (sorry) on WinNT boxes, and
accessed by users in a variety of environments (primarily PCs running
WinDoze, and about 83% of our customer base will be using IE as their
browser of choice).

TIA for any and all insight.  Feel free to reply to me privately to save
bandwidth - I'll post a summary to the list if anyone's interested.

  Anne Halsey
  wrdfinesse -at- aol -dot- com
  ahalsey -at- raindance -dot- com

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