TITLE: Help to Page or Page to Help: A Comparative Case Study

LEADER: Darren Barefoot

AFFILIATION: Cape Clear Software, Ireland

CONTACT PERSON: Darren Barefoot

CONTACT EMAIL: darren.barefoot@capeclear.com 

LENGTH: Half-day

TIME: Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 12:00p. 

ABSTRACT:

Single sourcing and content reuse is a hot issue amongst technical writers. This tutorial examines two solutions to producing online help and print-ready documents from the same source material. Harrowing tales will be offered of two opposing single-sourcing strategies: Starting with a 1000-topic online help system, I have used RoboHelp Office to convert to Microsoft Word. Conversely, I have used Quadralay WebWorks to convert a 400-page manual developed in Adobe FrameMaker into a HTML-based help system. The process and pros and cons of each strategy will be described and evaluated. Attendees are guaranteed cautionary tales, best practices and, if they're lucky, some MS Word macros to take home with them.

THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED

Last modified October 28, 2001 by Scott Tilley.