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The WWP Pro 7 and FrameMaker Perspective 

Sorry for the delay. I actually wanted to finish the project before posting, and I did so last week. Programming changes kept pushing things back. 

My single-source workflow created four deliverables from one set of FrameMaker files. 

The Author document was 750 US-letter-sized pages--when all conditions are shown. This included a chapter that acts as a style guide and includes the IDs used for context-senstitive help. These IDs are hyperlinked to the location in the FrameMaker book where the ID is used, to help an author locate text for a context-sensitive topic. The document uses three conditions extensively:  

OnlineOnly, which are conditions like Related Topic text that are for display in the online help, PrintOnly, which includes tutorials and graphics intended for use in the online and press-ready PDF, and comment, wherein I provide the names of linked graphics in a given section, to aid in their future replacement, and descriptions of certain techniques as a CYA maneuver, in case my editors call me on them. 

I intend that all writing and editing happen in the author document. 

The press-ready document. This document uses one-color (black) text intended for output from both a Xerox DocuTech and a web/offset press. The page size is 8-3/8 in. by 10-3/4 in, to accommodate the company standard in book size. Like the online book, it is 608 pages (neatly divisible by 32) and features content that the online help does not: many screen captures and some tutorials. 

The online PDF uses color as a design element to help with navigation and in  
identifying mailto's and hypertext of all sorts. This document has the same  
content as the press-ready PDF, but is a standard US-letter size, only to  
accommodate the expectations of those who would print it off hteir local, 
office, or personal printer. 

The context-sensitive online help is designed as a reference document (it is a CHM) for on-scren viewing and not for printing. Like the online PDF, this document uses color as a design element for navigation, and to draw attention to notes and cautions. Like the online PDF, it is searchable for any word or string, has an extensive index and contents tab, and unlike the online PDF, uses pop-ups for glossary definitions and uses related topics for additional navigation. Built into the CHM, specifically to address some tutorials , is forward and back hypertext navigation, so the reader can page through the CHM to move from one section of the tutorial to the next. The online help has 1770 topics and 670 graphics (the PDFs have as many as three times that many unique graphics). 

While the context-senstive help and online PDF are included on the product CD (as well as the online help, the online PDF can be called from the help menu), these files are also available for download from the corporate Web site and will be included in patches and updates to the product; this way, the online documentation is kept current. The printed documentation is perfect bound with hard, four-color covers and one book is included with the purchase of the software. Because of the logistics and costs of the medium, the printed documentation will not be updated with each and every patch and product update. 

The design of the documentation includes the following considerations: 

Variables are used for repeated text, like technical support phone numbers and product name. This permits an easy, global change if those things should change. 

Margins are designed to be used in conjunction with sideheads to permit  
significant text expansion and future translation of the documentation. While the documentation and product are not currently translated, the layout will support translation. Additionally, standard phrasing is repeated and text was added to new graphics (not legacy ones) in FrameMaker, rather than text being added directly to the image. 

All graphics are linked for easy editing and replacement. 

I was a WWP Pro version 6 user. This was my first WWP Pro version 7 project. There was no learning curve of any significance. The workflow does accommodate one bug and one shortcoming in WWP Pro 7, the former to do with how context-sensitive help is handled and the latter a graphics placement issue for online help output. 

I designed the templates and layout and set up the online help as part of the live project, there was no downtime. As a result, it is difficult to quantify the time taken to set up the online help separately from the rest of the single-sourcing project. However, an educated ballpark figure is 24-hours to set up the online help portion. 

The payoff, however, is in repeatability and efficiency. After content is written (in the Author document), it takes about 20 minutes to produce the CHM (online help, including context-sensitivity, popups, related topics, all of which is automatic), it takes 20 minutes to print the online book (PDF), and another 20 minutes to print the press-ready PDF. 

The beauty of this is reliable and rapid repeatability. If the software changes--and it did, this product had about 7 "hard" ship dates over the last two months--the document can be frozen and all deliverables created within the hour. If the product changes, then only one source is updated, and as soon as the content is written, the online help takes 20 minutes--20 minutes regardless of the amount or kind of changes (actually, for minor changes it is about 10 minutes, but no more than 20 for huge changes). So, when version x+1 of the product comes out, online help creation can be estimated at 20 minutes. 

Moreover, as a bonus, this same template can be applied to other documents in the product line, decreasing the time needed to create them. 

In the previous workflow, the online help was written first and a bunch of VBA macros and tweaking used over a _minimum) 40-hour period to create the printed doc. The new, FM+WWP Pro workflow shaves 39+ hours of that process. For the first project, or a one-off project of a unique type, the 6-hour RoboHelp process might make sense. For projects that are not one-off, that will be edited and updated, and for projects of a similar type, the 1-hour WWP Pro process will pay for itself quite quickly. 

Cheers, 

Sean