"Airplane Help"

Self on Help

Thoughts from the OASIS DITA Help Subcommittee Chair

"Airplane Help" describes a technique whereby locally installed Help and server-based Help are integrated, so that a software application user is presented with server Help if he or she has an Internet connection, or local Help if not. The advantage of this approach is that the most current version of the Help is displayed if possible, but at least some form of Help is displayed when the user is "offline". Can DITA play a role in delivering Airplane Help? I suspect not, because we're talking about a delivery approach, not a content authoring approach. Sure, DITA could be used to produce both the "online" and "offline" forms of the Help, but my feeling is that it hasn't much to offer beyond that in this case.

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