Single sourcing Word and HTML

[Kylie Bansemer <kylie -at- QITS -dot- NET -dot- AU>]

I am contracting with a company which makes extensive use of procedure
or business systems documentation.  Currently, this documentation is
written in Word and printed.  The Word documents don't use any nifty
features like bookmarks, either.  Just styles and plain old text.
However, in the past couple of months I have seen a definite push by
developers to get the information on-line, as HTML documents.

We still need the Word documents.  Most of the managers here are not
familiar with HTML, and have no wish to learn it, so they will still
need to edit the Word source.  The documents will also still need to be
printed to show to visitors, such as clients, other department
personnel, etc.

As far as I can tell, our options are:

- to use Word's Save As HTML feature.  However, the HTML created is
unattractive and pretty darn useless.

- to create some custom macros to do our own Save As HTML, which will
convert styles as needed, save sections in the document as separate
pages, insert links, etc.  But this will require a fair amount of time
to implement.

- to forget about single sourcing and maintain two sets of documents.
This will also take some time to implement and maintain.


So, my question is, what to do?  Are there third-party applications out
there that will do this?  Have other companies tried to implement
something like this?  Are there any other options?

Any insights, experience, tips, examples appreciated.

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Kylie Bansemer
Click Computing
...Mailto:click -at- qits -dot- net -dot- au
...http://www.hypermart.net/click
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