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Robohelp HTML v11 generated as WebHelp
Our help system is context-sensitive Webhelp that resides on proprietary hardware with a modified browser that supports Webhelp. It is a relatively small (300 topic) system, but is translated into 15 languages (by an outside service). This means (of course) that we have 16 separate folders, one for each language as an autonomous help system.
The software on this piece of hardware is getting to be too large for the storage and I'm being asked to find ways of consolidating space. I'm removing images, and every word has to justify its existence, but it's not enough.
We cannot host the help on a server because the hardware is not always connected to the internet. When it is, it can sometimes be with a dial up connection.
Can anyone think of any suggestions for consolidating space? The developers look at a lot of my files that are not content and say, "Can't these be reused between translations?" I've been giving the "Not if you want it to work" answer, but I'm having a hard time being believed.
Is there anything else I'm not thinking of that we can do?
Robin
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Presuming you’ve got some sort of installer happening for getting your content loaded, what about splitting up the different languages into separate installers? Then you would only install the languages that you needed & not waste space on ones that you didn’t use.
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Thanks, Jeff.
That would be ideal, but unfortunately we can’t implement it. The reason is because we don’t ship regional hardware. Any hardware could be sold to any part of the world, so there is no way to know which languages will have it.
I am proposing now that perhaps we ship a thumbdrive with the help in various translations on it, which they can load during the installation process. I'm not happy with this idea, but it might be the best I can come up with. Beats shipping with no help at all.