NT help file ideas?

From: OLeary, Sean (NJ) (oleary@msmail.awii.com)
Date: Tue Apr 18 2000 - 10:22:18 EDT


I'm looking for recommendations on tools used to develop Help files for
running on NT. We are reworking our help system and need to provide it in
multiple languages. Not having worked directly on Help files for a couple of
years, I'm note sure what the state of the art is.

Here are some general issues:

We need to provide the Help system in multiple languages, including Far East
languages. The base document would be written in English and then
translated.

We would like to keep indexing and table of contents building as simple as
possible.

The Help system will be run on NT but will contain information for non-NT
applications, too. If we could hook the Help system into our NT
applications, that would be a big plus.

Some suggestions include:

Write the original in an MS Word doc. Translations to the other languages
could be done against this original doc and each translated version could be
output as HTML.

Use a tool such as Html Help to create all the documents.

Use an XML tool ... assuming one is available.

Outsourcing the translation work is not an option at this point. (The scream
you hear is me biting my tongue.)

Any ideas, as well as their good and bad points, would be greatly
appreciated.

Sean O'Leary
oleary@awii.com
973-594-5077



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