Word and WebWorks Workflows
AlmondWeb offers customization, support, and training services for Microsoft Word and Quadralay WebWorks ePublisher. We develop:
- Word templates
- WebWorks configurations
- VBA macro systems for document automation
- Custom authoring solutions for formatting, indexing, and many other purposes
Single Sourcing
AlmondWeb offers robust single-sourcing solutions based on the Word and WebWorks technology.
For example, one of our clients required a 1000-page documentation library, comprising over 15 manuals. The documentation had the following single-sourcing requirements:
- The library supports multiple OEM-branded versions of the software.
- The OEM versions have differing feature sets.
- The OEM versions use different product names, vendor names and logos, support addresses, installation paths, etc.
- The documentation is localized into several European and Asian languages.
- In addition to the text, many of the screen captures require localization and OEM-branding.
- The library is published in CHM and PDF formats.
- The library supports embedded, context-sensitive help. As the user works in the software GUI, the help scrolls automatically to the appropriate topic and location within the topic, without user intervention.
- The entire library is updated and republished—in all brands and languages—several times a year.
To implement these requirements, we developed a single-source workflow based on WebWorks technology. The workflow uses a resource-file and conditional-text mechanism to output the multiple versions. We customized WebWorks to output a custom XML index, which the software uses to display the embedded help. Creating and maintaining the library requires hardly more time than for a simple, one-version documentation set.
Special-Purpose Authoring Tools
Since 1991, we have been involved in custom authoring tool creation. Here is a selection of some tools we have developed:
- For COM API documentation: a tool that generated help topics from information extracted from COM type libraries.
- For an error reference: a tool that transformed XML error lists to a formatted Word document.
- For a software localization project: a tool that extracted translated command strings from the source code and inserted them in the User's Guide.
- For a legacy-software modernization project: a tool that prepared 6000 pages of documentation for display in a proprietary online help viewer.
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