Feb 21, 2008
Day 12: Documentation
Your team can use a wiki to collaboratively write, edit, and assemble documentation. If you publish it electronically, consider letting your audience contribute to the wiki and help build the documentation:
Books |
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PhotosClick the photo above, or choose a photo essayAirbus Factory • Barcelona & Madrid • British Museum Istanbul • Porto • Sydney • Vancouver • Yosemite |
LinksBefore & After • Bobulate • Brand New • gary's choices Identityworks • The Ministry of Type • Pr*tty Sh*tty swissmiss • Taste of Beirut • Technology and Organizations • Work+Place |
WorkFuture Changes is the online home of Stewart Mader, an experienced content strategist and project manager, dynamic speaker to corporate audiences and conferences, and author of two books. He has helped organizations around the world, including Booz Allen Hamilton, Brown University, ICANN, MARS, SAP, and The World Bank develop content strategies and build products that increase information value, collaboration, and employee & customer engagement.Future Changes, founded in October 2005, has been cited by CIO Magazine, Fast Company, InformationWeek, InfoWorld, The Guardian, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. View Work Samples and Work with Stewart |
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Rebecca says:
Mar 3rd, 2008
Hi,
I am in the investigative stages of creating user documentation using a wiki. I currently have a multi-chapter FrameMaker document that I import into a HAT to create context sensitive help. How would I create a manual from multiple wiki pages?
Stewart Mader says:
Mar 3rd, 2008
Hi Rebecca,
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with the acronym HAT – can you give me more details there?
Thanks,
Stewart
Janet Swisher says:
Mar 11th, 2008
Hi Stewart,
HAT is Help Authoring Tool, which is a specialized program for creating online help for applications. Some of the top tools in this category are Adobe RoboHelp, MadCap Flare, and WebWorks ePublisher.
It seems likely that most wiki engines can export the content of the documentation wiki pages as HTML files, which could be imported by most HATs.
The tricky question is how to get the wiki-based Table of Contents into a format that a HAT would recognize as a TOC. For example, to produce Microsoft HTML Help (a.k.a. .chm, the standard help format on Windows), the TOC has to be in a specific structure of HTML 2.0 “li” and “object” tags. If the wiki doesn’t export in a format that can be easily translated into this format, you’re stuck recreating your TOC in the HAT.
I’m interested in any examples you can share of actual projects that have generated print or online documentation from a wiki. Even if you can’t share names of companies or their products that are documented this way, it would be helpful to know what wiki engine and other tools they use.