Re: DOCBOOK: dynamically generated online help

["Christopher R. Maden" <crism@maden.org>]

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At 08:21 26-10-2001, Cohen, Joyce wrote:
>I work for a software dev company that is trying to integrate it products
>under one
>web-based UI. The goal is that when you purchase two or more of our
>products,
>the UI will dynamically change to reflect additional products as they are
>installed.
>We need an online help system that accommodates this - one that dynamically
>builds at
>install time, adding field help and topics as necessary.
>
>As I was reading up on XML over the web, I stumbled on DocBook.
>
>Does anyone out there have experience with this sort of thing? I would
>appreciate any sort of advice!

I have more questions than advice, I'm afraid.

The UI, AIUI, is served from the Web server, and created there according to 
the user's status.

Where is the help stored and generated?  Is that also on the server, or 
does the user have local help files?  What is the UI into the help?

In any case, I think DocBook could be of use in creating and maintaining 
the documentation and help, but the context-sensitivity is orthogonal (or 
nearly so).

You may find more information on the xml-doc mailing list, too; see <URL: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xml-doc >.

- -Chris
- -- 
Christopher R. Maden, Principal Consultant, HMM Consulting Int'l, Inc.
DTDs/schemas - conversion - ebooks - publishing - Web - B2B - training
<URL: http://www.hmmci.com/ > <URL: http://crism.maden.org/consulting/ >
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