My technical publications group has been given the task of replacing an existing document management system. The tool we’re looking for seems to be different from other doc/content management systems that I’ve seen discussed in technical writers’ forums. So I turn to the web development community in hopes that you might know about some tool that we can use without having to write our own.
The problem in brief: We have to replace a tool currently visible only to UNIX users with one that both UNIX and PC folks can use. Our “tool” is really a collection of links to documents that live all around a very large system and that will never 1) all be collected in one place or 2) all be converted to HTML.
More information on the current system:
1. The documents we “manage” through our current system are created by tech writers, engineers, department support folks, vendors, and customers. And they’re dispersed in a very large networked UNIX system. Some are grouped in the Tech Pub group’s folders, but others are tucked away close to the systems or datasets they describe.
2. Our current document management tool is available only to our UNIX users. It’s really a collection of links that point to probably a thousand documents of various types (PDFs; Frame, Interleaf, and text docs; HTML pages; and even some Bristol HyperHelp docs). Our “tool” is a single-page FrameMaker file that makes use of reference page flows and Frame’s ability to use various kinds of hyperlinks. The result is a series of 3-level pull-right menus with links at any level able to start Acrobat or Netscape and to display the desired documents.
(cont’d in -2 post)