Technical Writing is arguably a challenging profession. It’s a mix of creativity and technology, and a lot of intelligence. One of biggest cornerstones of professional technical writing is the use of authoring tools. RoboHelp, FrameMaker and Flare, are some of the popular (and also expensive) authoring tools.
With web-based applications becoming more and more universal, the need for online or web-based help files has increased over time. (For the non-technical writer, an online help is the book and topic-based help file that opens when you click the Help tab/button or click the question-mark icon, or press the F1 key on your keyboard.)
RoboHelp and Flare are two of the most commonly used authoring tools to create an online help file. However, these are not free and a single license can cost anywhere from $400 to $700, and upgrades are also available for a price. Since, technical writing is quite new in India, and most work is being recently off-shored, most Indian companies do not like to invest in authoring tool licenses. The most common approach is to coax the onsite client or customer to purchase the license for the technical writing team/resource in India. While I don’t want to get into the dynamics of the “you-license-or-we-license” syndrome that directly impacts a technical writers professional growth and on-the-job working condition, I want to dwell on a small experiment that I recently made to deliver an online help file without a licensed fully functional authoring tool.
I was in a project, where the onus was on me to “sell” my technical writing abilities and ensure the customer realizes the value-add of a professional technical writer in the development project. So, when I was asked to make a user guide in MS-Word for a web-application, I did the needful, but also went a step-ahead to offer an online help, which could be integrated into the application. Customers are happy when you offer them a little more than what they accept; and needless to say my customer was glad. The only glitch being nobody wanted to offer me a licensed tool. I had the option to use a trial version of any of the licensed tools, but I decided to take up the challenge and create an online help using only free-ware.
The base-code of the online help was HTML, so I needed two free-tools – 1. An HTML Editor; and 2. A
compiler for the HTML help. Now using two very basic tools implies a thorough understanding of HTML as well as of Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript. After a thorough research of available freeware, I downloaded the HTML-Kit, CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2008 and Microsoft HTML Help Workshop.
HTML-Kit Build 292 downloaded from http://www.htmlkit.com is a full-featured editor designed to help HTML, XHTML, XML and script authors to edit, format, lookup help, validate, preview and publish web pages. HTML-Kit supports authoring of multiple web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting frameworks.
I found it to be a very user-friendly tool, and used it to code, and tidy up the code for my HTML pages. It has an inbuilt drag and drop FTP workspace for multiple servers. The more than 400 free plugins available on the site can help you to add to the myriad features of this easy-to-fall-in-love-with tool. The various plugins available create one development environment that makes it very easy to use these disparate technologies, for example, I found a plugin for DocBook extremely interesting.
A customer review for HTML-Kit reads as follows: “Definitely the best and I have struggled with most. Not for the beginner, but as soon as one knows a bit about HTML coding HTML-kit promotes the rapid acquisition of skills by its clear layout and logical grouping of tags. I have not found anything in the HTML world worth doing that I cannot do easily and quickly with this application. Using HTML-kit with TopStyleLite and Notetab (both available on mouse click or keyboard short-cut) makes the developer’s life one of ease and luxury. Add the application to your Firefox menu with the View Source With add-on and you are go!”
Another review reads, “Given the complexity and the variety of technologies used to create web pages using something more than a plain text editor is desirable. Because of its many options and plug-ins HTML-Kit can help relieve the developer’s burden.”
An Alpha version, HTML-Kit Tools (build 300) is in development and is currently only available for download by registered users. Build 292, the current stable build is available for download as freeware.
Vis-a-Vis HTML-Kit, I also downloaded CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2008, from www.coffeecup.com, which is a fancier HTML and XHTML Editor. Again its extremely useful for creating the Cascading Style Sheets and for working with Tables, Images, and Links. The GUI of the tool is also more appeasing. The only flip-side of this tool is that the WYSIWYG or the Visual Editor is not functional in the free version.
To compile the HTML pages into a .chm or online help file, I used the free Microsoft HTML Help Workshop from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms669985.aspx. It comes with its own HTML Help Image Editor. This is again a very basic tool to compile HTML pages in book and topic formats, with a proper TOC, Index and Search by keyword options. It also provides an inbuilt HTML tag reference.
The general design and output of the generated online help file was appreciated by the client, and helped me bag another online help related assignment for our project. Alas! Even this assignment doesn’t offer the luxury to work with a licensed high-end authoring tool. Till then, my love affair with HTML Kit and HTML Help Workshop continues!!
Share and Show: 
