TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Creating a help file and getting rid of the graphics may reduce the size but by
no means the problems of finding anything.
An index with hypertext links works if the terms used mean something to the
intended audience. In other words, it takes a lot of usability testing.
With such a large set of information, it is probably worth having two levels of
indexes. The online information should have a global home page, and local home
pages linked through hypertext links. Each level has its own index, one
general, one detailed. Between local home pages should be jumps for strong
relationships.
If you are talking about help linked to keys or options, you should not have a
problem if the information is brief and divided up the same way as the system
and its use. You can use visual basic or C++ to link panels to F1. The hardest
part is linking to events. So many things done online do not involve system
events, or several actions involve the same system event.
In terms of the paper manuals in volumes, a master index can use:
rubber baseball bats, use of (v12),pp777-778
The problem is whether this has to be done manually or whether it can be part
of the markup for the index tag. For example, the index entry itself could
include the (v#) as its last element.
