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Subject:re-online Help proposal From:Robert Bennett <RBENNETT -at- TECHDATA -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 10 Nov 1998 13:43:42 -0500
Denise,
I have never had to bid a Help project, but I have written plenty of
them. I hear that the rule of thumb is to allow about four hours per
topic. Plus or minus a bit for all the obvious factors. That sounds
reasonable to me, but with more time, I can do a better job.
Context sensitive Help is not a technical problem, it's a communications
problem. Developers routinely establish the necessary "Help context
IDs" (numbers) that uniquely identify each screen or field. That much
is probably already done.
You must get these numbers from the developers and associate them with
your Topic IDs (usually in the .hpj file or a separate text file).
Developers can be difficult about this. I know of one case where the
Help author finally got the necessary numbers...in hexadecimal notation.
If you have the RoboHelp office suite, the "BugHunter" can read these
numbers directly from the running program in base 10 (yippee).
I have never met the developer willing to participate in field-level
Help (too much communication...).
