Tool Selected

After evaluating Flare, Doc-to-Help, and RoboHelp, I chose RoboHelp for the Disaster Recovery manual at work. RoboHelp was always the favorite to be chosen for two reasons:

• I worked with it for a dozen years at Quintrex
• I like coding HTML, JavaScript, and CSS

The bottomline is I had to decide what tool I want to have my content in:

• Word
• HTML
• XML

Choosing Doc-to-Help would be the means to writing content in MS Word, which I'd be okay with because I adore MS Word macros. However, for the HTML deliverable, it would mean trusting a Word to HTML conversion as part of the publication process.
Choosing Flare would be the means to writing content in XML, which is appealing because of its acceptance as the next big thing in technical writing. However, I was intimidated by the number of "how to get started with Flare" guides. I was hesitant to invest a lot of time in absorbing multiple "get started" guides. I also was nearly swayed by the Madcap marketing campaign, especially comparing choosing a HAT to a dating game in a video on youtube.com. I think Flare is a great product but a lot of its features are not ones I would use. I will not have to translate content to other languages. I will not have more than 3 simple deliverables. It seemed like a Cadillac when all I need is a Chevy Equinox.
Choosing RoboHelp meant choosing a Chevy Equinox. My content will be written in HTML and use JavaScript and CSS to enhance it. The fact that the conditional build tags and the user-defined values and the command line compiler, which I had used previously, made it feel like a comfortable soft blanket.

I'm confident that I made the appropriate choice for my situation. I expect that in the weeks and months ahead, I will post about using RoboHelp and any neat things I discover in the journey I'm undertaking.