[Sigia-l] Word HTML - money were my mouth is (was When Should a Manual be Web-based?)

[John O'Donovan-INTERNET]

As someone who writes a lot of specifications, pitches and other documents I
always use styles. It's a golden rule of document layout and design. When
you export your docs as HTML you will get fairly consisten results from
newer versions of word though you will find a lot of dubious HTML in there -
and no seperate stylesheet.

I often find the problem is getting everyone else to use styles when working
on a large collaborative document with many contributors. Or when setting up
a house "style" for a project group, getting people to use the same
templates and styles is very difficult.

Many people do not have technical writing or document layout experience so
find it far too easy to just format text using the provided buttons which
are all too accessible. Whereas the style gallery in Word is hidden away on
a menu, the bold, indent, font size and other options are clearly displayed
and easy to hit. 

Good layout and document design can make long documents far more accessible,
but I have seen huge reference tomes delivered even without page numbers,
numbering, contents pages, etc.

Now what I really need is some form of CMS to handle writing my
documents...content sperated from presentation...multiple export
formats...collaborative working...content reuse...if only such a thing
existed...

Cheers,

jod


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