- Small, growing, international software company with limited resources in both finances and staff

- 600 pages of end user documentation maintained in Microsoft Word

- Large, international hardware manufacturer with immense documentation library

- 500 pages of end user documentation in non-structured FrameMaker

- To improve quality of English documentation written by a non-native speaker

- To publish in both online help and pdf formats

- A framework for easy maintenance (no permanent technical writers) and expansion (new products, features, and languages)

- To tailor documentation to client needs: only provide documentation for the purchased features

- To organize screenshots for over 800 screens

- Documentation for a new product

- To maximize text reuse between products and models

- To improve English for better translation

- To move to a single-source system that is efficient for multiple authors in multiple locations

- To use current company applications

- To organize over 200 graphic files and minimize duplicates

- Edited text to international English for easy comprehension and translation

- Converted Microsoft Word documents to XML (DocBook) for easy reuse, maintenance, and expansion

- Identified similar text between screens to optimize single sourcing

- Created a standard file structure to enable direct access to the online help documentation from the software application screens

- Standardized and optimized graphics formats to publish to both pdf and online help

- Edited text to international English for easy comprehension and translation

- Identified reused text for one-time translation

- Converted non-structured FrameMaker files to structured (XML) FrameMaker files

- Created system to track section convertion, text changes, and graphic usage

- Stored files in Astoria single-source database allowing multiple authors, in multiple locations to reuse text

- Structured graphic files and identified all doubled graphics

- As all software is open-source, no additional costs are incurred.

- Files are written in an industry standard XML format (DocBook); if the company decides to buy proprietary software, there will be no conversion issues.

- As the company and product grows, the documentation system is easily expanded for new features and languages.

- The XML DocBook profiling feature is used to publish client-specific documentation and to tag format specific information, such as text only viewed online.

- Formatting is consistent throughout the documentation as it separated from the content and generated by stylesheets.

- Maintenance is simple due to content and graphic separation, one-time graphic upload, and chapter-level WYSIWYG editing application (free software).

- Translation time and costs are reduced due to fewer words in simple international English.

- Graphics are easily updated without risk of doubling.

- Reuse from the previous model's documentation is 87%.

- Authors can access the documentation without overriding or redoing another author's work.

- Compatibility between applications is not seamless and caused project delays. Engineers often solved issues by editing the XML directly instead of using the applications.

- Remote authors experience long download times for chapter-level editing.