Re: Question: Conversion of OH to Book or Book to OH

[D Gardner <DGARDNER -at- UWOHALI -dot- COM>]

> I'm wondering if any of you have experience converting existing material
> from an online help source to a printed source or vice versa. I would like
> to know

> - what worked
> - what didn't work
> - what you would do differently
> - which way you went (book to online or online to book)

> I'd appreciate any comments on the process you took!

> Please respond directly to me, and I'll compile the responses.

> Thanks!

Last year I contracted on a project to BellSouth in Birmingham AL.
They took all their system SOPs and put them in a standard format for
on-line docs.  We used I-leaf with World View for a viewing program
of the finished product and RDM (Relational Document Management)
to provide a database
structure for the documentation and all the bits & pieces of them.
We had one catalog structure for the on-line version and they were
developing a different catalog to be used for printing h/c versions
to accomodate the difference in format needs.

So, what worked:

I-leaf + World View + RDM
Catalogs - on-line vs. h/c

What didn't work:

Lack of knowledgable people to set up the s/w interfaces and catalogs
correctly - 1st time BellSouth had I-leaf.  Lots of trial and error!

What to do differently:

Make sure there is at least one knowledgable person to be the s/w
guru (dependant upon size of project)
Leave enough time for tweaking of catalogs BEFORE starting mass
input!

Which way:

on-line to book - main thrust was for this to be on-line usage.

Hope this helps.