Setting up Extremely Large Manuals

[zieglel]

I have been a Robohelp user for 7 years, but mostly, I have created 5 to 50-page .chm files. Now I need to create a manual with 2000 to 3000 pages to place online for users to access via our company website. When compiled, it is already 6 mgs, and I've barely started. Does anyone have suggestions as to whether I should keep adding info to this one or divide it into sections? If I do make several sections, can they be linked together?

Thanks for any and all help with this.

[Captiv8r]

Hi there

If your plan is to place on a company web site, I'm guessing WebHelp or FlashHelp are your outputs. And you may take two or more of these and create a merged output to use. For more information on this, click here.

Cheers... Rick

[PDF Boy]

Yes, Peter has detailed info on this on his site. Read and enjoy. 🙂

[zieglel]

Thanks so much! It looks like I'll not be able to create .chm files on this one. Right?
Lenda

[RoboColum_n_]

Hi Lenda.
Yes you can also create CHM files but if you are publishing to your company website then this output type is no good as it is designed to be run locally. You could place a CHM on the network and get the users to download to a local drive but I guess this is not what you want. If you need your users to always access the latest manual then webhelp or flashhelp are the way forward.

[zieglel]

Is it safe to creat really large .chm files? My company likes the aspect that little pieces do not "get lost."

[RoboColum_n_]

The issue is not whether you can have large CHM or webhelp files but large RH projects. I've worked on RH projects of approximately 1000 topics each with no real problems (apart from opening the darn project which took an age). It may prove easier to split up a project of your size into chapters and merge them. You can do this no matter whether you produce CHMs, webhelp or flashhelp. Which ever way you go, things will not get lost so don't worry. The compile will include exactly what you tell it to and provided all the output is shipped and installed in the correct location you won't loose anything.