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Subject:RE: thoughts on multiple help systems From:Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 24 Sep 2003 07:52:01 -0700 (PDT)
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Victoria Nuttle
I was just wondering what the current thoughts are on having multiple
help systems for a single application. Good? Bad? Runaway train?
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We are currently doing this sort of setup for a .NET application. We have context-sensitive help that we write in the metadata, we then have a web-based help system that covers the conceptual and procedural information. Users can access form-level help from a help button on each web form, and they can get their field-level help from the context-sensitive help.
You mentioned two help systems. I don't understand why you would have to do that. Depending on the tool you're using, you could simply create a single help system, and use build tags, map files, and other hocus pocus for the context-sensitive help. But I suppose this also depends on the kind of application you are writing for.
Anyway, your plan sounds fine to me seeing how we're doing essentially the same thing.
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"This is either madness or brilliant."
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Sean Hower - tech writer http://hokum.freehomepage.com
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