documentation woes

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- OKWAY -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>]

Judith,

You said:

>Paper documentation is difficult to find, and difficult to use. On-line
>help files that are easy to read and, especially, easy to FIND, will
>reduce the work load on your consultants. Make sure there are many ways
>to access the file. Don't insist that the user know the exact right
>name. Make up a dozen or more aliases for each function, trying to
>think of what some idiot might call them. If your users are on terminals
>or machines that are compatible, you could have an F-key that would
>always bring up help files. Go around and put "HELP" labels on that
>key in everyone's office.
>Judith E. Schrier, Editor              Laboratory Primate Newsletter

What's more, you are right. My problem is that we have so many different
people accessing many different systems in many different ways. We have
been sticking with paper docs because some users access the system via
line mode, some dial-up, some use dedicated terminals, and some are spread
across this whole town.

Our situation is very diverse, which causes me big problems with documentation.
I have been sticking with rudimentary paper documentation because it seemed like
the only thing that everyone could use.

Is there something I am missing--like online documentation authoring systems
for mainframe computer systems? Perhaps there are good (also affordable and
easy) hypertext development tools available for mainframe systems--does any one
know about this?

Eric