atw: Re: New Software for Documentation Department

Hi John,

I think AuthorIT is an excellent choice for single-sourcing, but there are
limits on just what can be pulled from one source! Other than help formats,
it can only publish to Word format documents. And on top of that, it works
much better for structured documents rather than design-intensive documents
like brochures. 

If you go for the more expensive Enterprise version, it can spit out XML,
which you could in theory feed into a dedicated publishing system. You can
see that this is starting to look complex, though. 

I'd question whether there is really much to be gained by trying to
single-source brochures, online help and technical documents. Typically the
brochure-style products are not going to have anything that is shared with
products that are structured like online help and manuals. I'd say it is
much easier to use a design package like InDesign or Corel for your
brochures (I do both, I buy my own software, and that's how I do it!).

If you are interested in publishing to the internet, you need a solution
that is strong for genuine HTML based output (i.e. not the MS proprietary
HTML Help). AuthorIT does support it (naturally - all authoring tools do!).
However, it is harder to customise the look and feel compared to say
RoboHelp because it does not have "skins". You have to create your own
templates for that purpose.

cheers

Colin Dawson

Info Action Pty Ltd
P (02) 9674 7025
F (02) 9620 8441
www.info-action.com.au
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