Integrating a documentation/help engine with Omnis desktop app

Fri Nov 11 18:21:12 UTC 2022

Thank you, Doug, appreciate your valuable feedback.

We use Atlassian Confluence for our internal documentations, and I was thinking of it as an option for storing the help docs, but no one in the list mentioned anything about it as an option, so probably it’s not a good option given its cost. 

Hmm.I need to do further research.

Thank you,

Mayada

From: Doug Easterbrook <doug at artsman.com> 
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2022 9:35 AM
To: OmnisDev List - English <omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com>
Subject: Re: Integrating a documentation/help engine with Omnis desktop app

hi Mayada.

I heard requirements for editing documentation and storing on central server.        oWrite got a lot of mention - and Michael’s examples show a documentation shows that off.   You can have links and such, images, etc.

On the other hand, Scotte mentions HTML and obrowser.

Personally, I’d go the HTML route since you can have all sorts of web effects, make it responsive, display it in oBrowser, edit it oBrowser and display it outside of omnis, if you wish.

there are tools like wordpress, drupal (or equivalent) that let you edit pages in place, with tracking tools, themes/styles, security (as to who can edit certain pages or alter themes).    Depending on what you pick there are plugins and such to make templates like calendars or what have you.

these tools support both HTML and/or markdown.    Refer to this link https://www.markdownguide.org if you have not heard of markdown.   It is a simple way of expressing a number of HTML things in plain looking english - so end users can generally get the rules/syntax.

for example, the markdown below is readable, 

is a header

========

- is line 1 in a bullet

- is line 2 in a bullet

*I am bold text* 

1. first item in a list

2. second item in a list

The web sites are portable (i.e. can be internal web site or external)  the data can be stored in a database (like postgres - thats where we store our drupal web page content) and a lot of people use tools like this to construct web sites, help dociumentation, and link to other pages.

so the keys to this are:

*	a content management tool like word press or drupal (free)
*	using a somewhat familiar language like markdown (or raw html if you want).
*	Typing content can be done fast

*	it is just a bunch of paragprahs that can be pasted from whereever
*	and it can be made nicer later with markdown.
*	Largely, if you have text with typical structure, it generally translates reasonably well.

*	having extensibility with plugins and commercially available tools
*	you can get responsive web pages out of it so that content looks good on phones, tablets, computers or tvs (maybe nice thing for training sessions or trade shows to show stuff on a tv, live, native and no screen sharing)
*	content creation process can be managed with security.
*	If you see a mistake on a page, you can invoke the edit mode and change it right then and there, in omins (in obrowser) and/or outside omnis in any browser.
*	html data is portable and can be stored in a database like postgres

thats just me

Owrite is great, we use it for storing documents, building email merges, etc.   It can import RTF.    It does well at what you see is what you get.  

it does not do well with responsive web interfaces or support of HTML tools like bootstrap, markdown, or offer programmability out side omnis

hope that helps.

Doug Easterbrook

Arts Management Systems Ltd.

mailto:doug at artsman.com

http://www.artsman.com

Phone (403) 650-1978

On Nov 11, 2022, at 5:32 AM, malkishtini at gmail.com <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com>  wrote:

Thank you to all who sent me their ideas and solutions. I really appreciate it.
All your ideas are smart and interesting, we'll investigate each of them and see which one works for us the most.

Thank you again and have a happy Friday,
Mayada

-----Original Message-----
From: omnisdev-en <omnisdev-en-bounces at lists.omnis-dev.com <mailto:omnisdev-en-bounces at lists.omnis-dev.com> > On Behalf Of Mike Matthews - Omnis via omnisdev-en
Sent: Friday, November 11, 2022 4:43 AM
To: OmnisDev List - English <omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com <mailto:omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com> >
Cc: Mike Matthews - Omnis <omnis at lineal.co.uk <mailto:omnis at lineal.co.uk> >
Subject: Re: Integrating a documentation/help engine with Omnis desktop app

We use oWrite this way for writing and storing documents.  But I don’t think oWrite can pull the HTML file back in and allow you to carry on where you left off, you have to save it as an oWrite binary file.

Mike Matthews

Lineal Software Solutions
Commercial House, The Strand<x-apple-data-detectors://1/1> Barnstaple, Devon, EX31 1EU<x-apple-data-detectors://1/1>

omnis at lineal.co.uk <mailto:omnis at lineal.co.uk> <mailto:mike.matthews at lineal.co.uk>

www.lineal.co.uk <http://www.lineal.co.uk> <http://www.lineal.co.uk/>

www.sqlworks.co.uk <http://www.sqlworks.co.uk> <http://www.sqlworks.co/>

On 11 Nov 2022, at 06:07, Scotte Meredith <spomacguy at gmail.com <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com> <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com>> wrote:

Caution: This is message has originated from outside the organisation. Ensure the sender is trusted and the content is safe before opening links or attachments.

oWrite takes word processing docs and one of the options to save is HTML. So you could keep the docs in the database and save to a website (or on the local server) as HTML. It's not going to be as complete a solution as FrameMaker or RoboHelp, but it is pretty good. And would be much easier to use than either of the others. Keep a table of all your documents and store with it a path to the server where you want them saved and that would work.

On Nov 10, 2022, at 7:38 PM, Mayada Al-Kishtini <malkishtini at gmail.com <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com> <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com>> wrote:

Both. The requirement now is to make the document editable by end use and our support team. At end, we might not need end users to edit the docs, but we want them to be easy to edit by non technical users, users with no dev skills.

Thank you,
Mayada

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 10, 2022, at 9:49 PM, Scotte Meredith <spomacguy at gmail.com <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com> <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com>> wrote:

So you want the end user to edit their own docs? Or your manual writer would upset the docs?

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 10, 2022, at 6:35 PM, malkishtini at gmail.com <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com> <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you, Scotte for your feedback. How can the user edit the document when it is in an HTML? Say they access it from oBrowser and then they want to add a new image to it or edit the content?

Mayada

-----Original Message-----
From: omnisdev-en <omnisdev-en-bounces at lists.omnis-dev.com <mailto:omnisdev-en-bounces at lists.omnis-dev.com> <mailto:omnisdev-en-bounces at lists.omnis-dev.com>> On Behalf Of Scotte Meredith
Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2022 9:20 PM
To: OmnisDev List - English <omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com <mailto:omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com> <mailto:omnisdev-en at lists.omnis-dev.com>>
Subject: Re: Integrating a documentation/help engine with Omnis desktop app

If you make it HTML you can access it from a window with oBrowser component, as well as online. You could create content in Adobe Robohelp and/or FrameMaker to create the HTML.

Or create in Word and save as HTML.

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 10, 2022, at 6:04 PM, malkishtini at gmail.com <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com> <mailto:malkishtini at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi $listers,

We are looking for a reliable/easy to use/edit documentation engine to integrate with our Omnis desktop app in Studio 10.22.
We are thinking to add a help support to each window in the system that users can easily access and edit.

Any suggestions/thoughts about a tool or an engine (free or with a reasonable cost) that we can install on a centralized server on the cloud?
I appreciate all your ideas and feedbacks.

Thank you,
Mayada Al-Kishtini

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Scotte Meredith
spomacguy at gmail.com <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com> <mailto:spomacguy at gmail.com>
509/998-0991

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