AuthorIT -- My new best friend

At Documentation Strategies we are always on the look out for technologies and tools that support the needs of our customers. AuthorIT continues to prove itself one of the great finds we have come across.

AuthorIT is an authoring environment, a content management system (CMS), and a publishing engine, all rolled up into one fully-integrated application. For those of you wanting your content to be a single source for many different output formats, this product is ideal. AuthorIT stores your content in small chunks that can be easily assembled into "books" and published to whatever format is called for. Output formats include Word, PDF, Web pages (either as HTML or XHTML), HTML Help, JavaHelp, Oracle Help, and WinHelp. You can also create standard XML and DITA from your content when working with other technologies. If you know the technology to which you are outputting, the formatting is quite simple as the application uses the underlying styles of the target format. For example, customizing your output to Word merely requires the creation of a Word template in the format you require. Using mappings in AuthorIT, output is automatically transformed into your desired look and feel.

I spent 12+ years as a FrameMaker die-hard and am quite used to going through the many steps needed to create the different output formats required by a typical technical writer. Creating my content in FrameMaker lets me take advantage of its robust editing environment, cross-reference features and formatting choices. From Framemaker I can print or create PDFs. If I want HTML, I can either use the built-in capabilities of Frame or, better, WebWorks Publisher. Once you get used to it, WebWorks does a fairly good job of HTML needs, including web pages and CHM, but you need to learn the interface and convoluted formatting language. Frame can now export as XML and even does a form of DITA.

However, this multi-application solution requires knowledge and mastery of different applications as well as the need to tweak and fiddle as the programs evolve. My new favorite tool is much easier to work with. From what I have seen of the new version of AuthorIT coming out soon, it's just going to get better and better.

---John Sturman, Senior Consultant, Documentation Strategies, Inc.