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I have become involved in a project creating a highly customizable
content editor ("authoring environment"--how's that for
marketing-speak), and part of what we want client developers/customizers
to be able to customize is the online Help. The editor and its core Help
file as shipped will be extremely basic, but customizers/developers will
be able to create an end-use editor as simple or as complex as required
for their situation or organization, complete with forms, dialog boxes,
and menu commands that we would never have foreseen.
Currently, we provide online Help in HTML (.chm) format with our
products, and have in the past included brief instructions for using MS
HTML Help Workshop to create a customized help file and merge it with
our help file. This, however, can be a pretty unwieldy process for the
average non-tech-writer to have to navigate alone--so much so that most
customizers and developers haven't bothered to customize the help,
leaving the end-use authors with little or no help using the product as
customized. For this reason, we are hoping to find some format or tool
that we can use to create truly customizable online Help, where
customizers can add their own topics with a minimum of fuss. (Being able
to annotate existing help topics or change the names of fields would not
go far enough--we need client developers to be able to create entire
topics and sub-topics.)
Has anyone on the list worked on a similar project in the past? If so,
how did you address this issue? I would appreciate any tips or guidance
you can provide.
Lorraine L. Butchart
Documentation Specialist
Corel Corporation
Vancouver Office
phone: (604) 430-1966 Ext 4429
e-mail: Lorraine -dot- Butchart -at- corel -dot- com
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