Inspiration for creating trouble shooting guide which is usable as an app

[StudioSm]

I have an unstructured FrameMaker document with a trouble shooting guide made with a table. Three columns: Fault - Probable Causes and Control/remedy.

I am publishing the document as an app and while I can make the table show up fine in the app, I would like to have the trouble shooting guide work in a more dynamic manner. "Something" with being able to click on the fault and being presented with a list of selectable probable causes from which you can click to the controls/remedies.

Would anybody have some inspiration to how I can make markup in the document to enable "something" like that? I have been experimenting with cross references, but can't really figure something out.

Best regards

Bjørn

[Russ Ward]

Hi Bjørn,

Sounds like a great idea and a fun project. I have to say, though, that it looks like you will need custom development to get what you want. Certainly, no desktop publisher can support this type of specialized content manipulation without some significant customization.

With some certainty, I do believe that the first step you should take is to structure the content. If you want to do interesting things with content, it needs metadata; that is, a logical roadmap for an automated process to follow. Unstructured content is now decades obsolete for any type of advanced publishing, because it lacks the markup to facilitate automation. With structural metadata, you can define any nature of additional information that could serve as instructions for conversion to your app. Of course, you would still need to build that conversion process, but at least you would have some better foundation to start with.

Hope this helps. Sounds like a fun project.

Russ

[StudioSm]

Hi Russ

Thanks for answering and you are probably right.

Only I was hoping to fine a shortcut, so to speak, to something which might work. 🙂

Best regards

Bjørn

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

Is there a reason you can't have a series of Probable Causes chapters that enumerate your choices?

The chapter layout would enable you to have a MiniTOC for each that keeps the list of choices linked to the current content of the doc.

-Matt

[StudioSm]

Hit Matt

Now that seems like an interesting idea which I shall try out. Exactly the kind of inspiration I was looking for 🙂

Best regards

Bjørn

[FieryPantone]

Can't offer any immediate replies, but I'll follow the thread with interest! I've just started looking at options for converting HTML output to some sort of native app format, starting from structured source files. I can see I have a lot to learn, but luckily I also have some very knowledgeable colleagues :-}