RE: What Program Do You Use for Software Documentation?

["Leonard C. Porrello" <Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- SoleraTec -dot- com>]

Lookin' for a fight are we? 

Do I need to respond to this, or is Richard's faulty warrant obvious
enough to everyone so that I don't need to?

Leonard

-----Original Message-----
From: Combs, Richard [mailto:richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 3:58 PM
To: Leonard C. Porrello; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: What Program Do You Use for Software Documentation?

Leonard C. Porrello wrote: 
 
> A hammer is a fine tool for smashing your thumb, but it stinks for
> authoring documents that call for sophisticated single sourcing and
> reuse. Similarly, Word is a great tool for some ends. So is
FrameMaker.
> However, neither Word nor FrameMaker facilitate sophisticated single
> sourcing or reuse ("snippets"). If you don't need those things,
> fantastic. Word or FrameMaker may be just the ticket; if you do,
you'll
> want to avoid both Word and FrameMaker and look to H&M, Flare,
RoboHelp
> or AuthorIt.

Nonsense. Countless tech writers have been single-sourcing manuals and
online help with a hammer -- I mean with FrameMaker --  for years. There
are several competing products available that facilitate doing so:
ePublisher Pro, Mif2Go, Adobe Technical Publications Suite (with
integrated FrameMaker and RoboHelp versions). All enable as much
"sophistication" (if not more) than the tools you mentioned. 

It's not clear what you mean by "reuse ('snippets')," but if you're
thinking of a database-driven solution, I understand from those who've
done it (I haven't) that implementing it with FrameMaker is far easier
than the alternatives. 

I used RoboHelp heavily in the past, but that was for a client who
wanted online help only. At that time (the eHelp days), you couldn't pay
me enough to use RH for print/PDF delivery. Maybe that's changed, but
I'll bet dollars to donuts that the FM+RH solution offered in the Adobe
TPS is far more capable and less aggravating.

Someone else will have to stick up for Word. I could, but my heart
wouldn't be in it. ;-)

Richard




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