How do I Evaluate Documentation Tools

It is essential to consider your documentation needs before you start evaluating any tools. All documentation tools have their strong points so the tool you choose should be the one that best suits your needs. Based on our extensive experience in the documentation industry we have designed Author-it to address the the most common issues encountered by people producing documentation.

Please consider the the following questions when evaluating your documentation needs.

Will you be creating large documents?

Will you be creating more than one type of documentation i.e. printed documentation and Online Help?

Do you need your documentation development ran along side your project(s?)

Will many people be contributing to the documentation?

How much technical writing experience does your team have?

How much time/money can you afford to spend on training?

Do you need to create several versions of your documents for different clients or divisions?

When looking at competing documentation tools please be aware that not all of them have single source capabilities i.e. produce printed, online and/or HTML documentation. Many are not designed to handle long documentation, are often word 'add-ons' and require the user to have extensive technical writing knowledge. For example FrameMaker has been designed primarily to produce printed media, which it does very well, but it can't produce Online Help. RoboHelp is excellent for producing HTML documents but the user needs to be an expert in HTML.