CogentHelp
David E. Caldwell, Michael White · 1997
CogentHelp is a prototype tool for authoring dynamically generated on-line help for applications whose graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are built with the Java Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT).In this paper, we describe some of the techniques used in CogentHelp to facilitate the authoring, maintenance and customization of high-quality help systems.These include the use of (1) a "single-source" methodology for developing program code and help text; (2) small-grained, reusable "snippets" of help text instead of monolithic topics; and (3) a lightweight, extensible framework for planning and generating help topics from "snippets".' VBHelp, from ForeFront, Inc.