Online help
Self on Help
"Airplane Help"
"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?
Self on Help
Tripane
In earlier musings about full-text search, I wondered whether the lack of full-text search (FTS) in the standard DITA OT XHTML outputs was restrictive. Bob Doyle pointed out that Eclipse Help InfoCenters provide FTS, and that led to some further wonderings about the complexity of Eclipse Help installations. I've since noticed some DITA users have come up with some ingenius workarounds so that DITA content can be turned into beautiful "WebHelp" output just like that produced by HTML-based Help Authoring Tools.
Self on Help
Typing Users
When I started as a technical writer, in the pre-PC days, most work was in what was called the engineering field. I mainly worked with aircraft manuals, but also with manuals relating to other engineering areas, such as buses, ships, and buildings. We produced hand-written manuscripts, which were typed, reviewed, typeset, laid out, reviewed, and finally printed.
Self on Help
DITA Help Subcommittee Meeting
The first teleconference meeting of the DITA Help subcommittee was held on Thursday/Friday last week. (That's Thursday in the US and Europe, and Friday in Australia and Asia.) The group has excellent experience across a broad range of fields, but all have in common an enthusiasm to make DITA a viable Help authoring environment. The first meeting broadly discussed goals and scope, but from now on we have to become more focussed on the actions we need to take!
Self on Help
Primary and Secondary User Assistance
In a talk at the TCANZ conference in New Zealand in September, Rob Houser explained that Microsoft's approach to user assistance separated UA into "primary" and "secondary". Primary UA is information users don't need to ask for. Secondary UA requires the user to interact before the information will appear. So screen titles, labels, wizard tasks, and other UX devices that help the user understand how to use the application form primary UA.