As demands on publications departments to lower costs and provide translated text increases, the push to move from non-structured to structured writing becomes stronger. At Salesforce.com, we moved from FrameMaker source and WebWorks/PDF outputs to XML/DITA source and a combination of Flare and homegrown build scripts to produce PDF and HTML (and for a while, even CHM) outputs, with rich and complex interaction between document sets and complex translation requirements.

This talk will explain how we made that transition, and provide a closer look at the Flare setup required, first as a standalone step and then as an integrated part of the build process. This transition allows us to produce documentation with about five keyboard strokes. I will describe our experience with Flare vs. RoboHelp, and explain how we came to choose Flare as part of our build process.

Slides available here.