Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m an avid user and staunch supporter of free and Open Source software (FOSS). I could list all of the apps that I use, but that would be a lengthy blog post in itself.

There’s a lot of great FOSS software out there. But one area in which it’s lacking is professional-level help authoring tools. In 2005, Linux.com published an article titled “FOSS help authoring tools falter“. And not much seems to have changed in the intervening years.

What’s available in the FOSS world

As Aaron and I discussed in a podcast, there aren’t any free and Open Source help generation tools similar to Flare, RoboHelp, or WebWorks. The tools out there are more like help authoring GUIs. You type your text into an editor, then generate your help. It’s not exactly single sourcing.

DocBook and DITA come close, at least sort of. They can output HTML Help, and there used to be a DocBook stylesheet that could generate WebHelp systems similar to the output from RoboHelp. The problem is that you have very little control over the interface. You can’t add search, additional nagivation, or controls, without a lot of extra effort.

On top of that, there several tools for creating JavaHelp. Like many technical communicators, you probably haven’t heard that name in a while. I used JavaHelp extensively nine or 10 years ago, but it’s since fallen off my radar. Beyond a few Java-authored applications, does anyone still use it? If you use JavaHelp, or know of a product that does, leave a comment.

Why no professional FOSS help tools?

So, why isn’t there a free or Open Source equivalent of RoboHelp or WebWorks or Flare? Coding a professional-level help authoring tool is hard. It’s really hard. And in saying that, I mean no disrespect to the community of developers out there.

When developing a professional-level help authoring tool, coders need to do more than just create software that spits help out in several formats. They also need to hook it into a tool like FrameMaker or Word or OpenOffice.org Writer. Or, whatever is being used to author documentation.

If a help IDE is being created, then developers need devise a way to enter and manage formatted, structured text — a powerful WYSIWYG environment. There also should be a way to output not only an online help system but also a properly formatted print document, whether as a word processor file or a PDF. The latter isn’t always necessary, but it helps.

It’s definitely not as easy as it sounds. Just ask someone at Madcap Software, Adobe, Author-it, or Quadralay. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes of a help authoring and generation program. And there are a number of other design considerations that must be addressed. Things like:

• The file formats to support
• How to transform source files into the output formats
• Support for conditional text
• Robust import and export filters
• Dealing with layout issues

And a whole lot more.

Conclusion

I’d love to see a group of developers craft a help authoring tool that implements even a subset of the features found in any of the big-name commercial help authoring tools. But the difficulty involved, the time require, and (at the moment, at least) the limited audience undoubtedly make this a low-priority project. Maybe one day, though.

Related posts:

1. A look at some other help authoring tools
2. Survey of help authoring tools
3. Structured authoring for everyone