On 23 Oct 2009 at 0:12, Torges Gerhard wrote: > Am 21.10.2009 um 06:48 schrieb David W. Fenton: > > > I think a number of us have offered plausible explanations more than > > once. If an application developer chooses a set of tools to produce > > cross-platform help files, and the tools are limited in what they can > > do in regard to browser-agnosticism, then the developer can end up > > with a situation like that which so many have complained about for so > > long. > > Oh my god! > > Just to make sure: We're talking about a sey of HTML files, aren't we?
No, we're talking about a complex set of source files that need to be end managed by a content management system and organized and structured in a way that makes them easily accessible in the end, and that makes it easy to produce the final output. It's not at all unlike the version-control system that are used to manage the code used to produce computer programs. I haven't seen the Finale HTML help files, but my bet is they aren't simple plain-text HTML, but complex files with frames and AJAX and the like, and complicated relationships between all the working parts. > It's a simple manual, David! > Does it have flashy videos in it? > Does it need Javascript, secure login forms or AJAX scripting? > > I guess no. Does it need it? I don't know. Does it have it? I also don't know, but if you look at code in the files, my bet is you'll find something substantially more complex than simple hand-coded HTML files. And likely it's not so much the format of the files as it is the hooks that have to be there for Finale to get you to the right place within each file. Plain old HTML anchors sound great, but they don't work well in all situations (such as short pages where there isn't enough content to scroll to the requested topic), so other solutions are often sought. I'm just speculating here -- I haven't upgraded since Finale 2003, so I'm still working with the horrid PDF manuals, where I can only find something if I already know what I'm looking for. > It might actually include some kind of search mechanism, but that > should be all what comes close to the term "complicated" in a HTML > user's guide. > > HTML is a pretty well established international standard, and there's > no need at all to implement browser specific hacks! I don't think anyone has even suggested that Finale launches IE because the code is IE-specific, because everyone reports that it looks just great when launched manually in Firefox and other Windows browsers. I really don't think you have much conception of what goes into making a help system, even in HTML (even when *not* using Microsoft's compiled HTML help format, as MM is not). It's not like coding your grandma's web page with a couple of pictures and a handful of links to other pages. There's all sorts of management and organization of digital assets and the very real problems of code management and just basic things like making sure your edits to shared CSS stylesheets don't break anything. Because of all of these issues, it's quite common for developers to use 3rd-party frameworks and tools that allow you to build and manage these complicated interlocking sets of documents. And my guess is that the tool MM chose had an unfortunate hardwired dependency on IE in Windows. But I think you vastly underrate the complexity of such a project and why developers would yoke themselves to 3rd-party frameworks that might not be perfect, but get the job done more quickly and with more polish than could be done by building it from scratch. > Why did Microsoft get away for so long with it's buggy Internet > Explorer which displayed lots of HTML code just plain wrong? Because > Web site designers worked around this. There were two reasons: 1. Microsoft used its monopoly position to vastly disadvantage the competition. 2. simultaneously with that, the main competitor, Netscape, imploded under the weight of their awful codebase and went dark for several years. In the meantime, Microsoft created a darned good browser, one that was much earlier to support CSS and any number of advanced standards (the XMLHTTP object that is the basis of AJAX was created by MS for IE). But MS didn't follow standards -- they did what they thought was best (and what served their own needs) rather than working with the standards creation committees (that has changed -- in the last 5 years or so, MS has been an active participant in all the browser- related standards discussions, and a worthy and well-intentioned participant at that). > If they told their customers to use a better browser instead MS would > have fixed much earlier. If who told what? > BTW: Sibelius uses a PDF manual for at least 3 (?) years now. > No need for different versions there. > And yes, it's searchable! Finale used to have a PDF manual and it was horribly difficult to use. HTML help is not the same thing as a digital manual, though. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
