Do you need a technical writer who creates a user manual or an online help file for you? Or do you even want to supply both printed and online documentation – for the price of one?

We can create all parts of your technical documentation in the required formats – either in English or in German. All texts will be written in plain, clear language, well structured and organized into small modules.

With the help of special authoring tools, we’re able to generate printed user manuals and online help from the same, shared text base. If required, we can even produce different versions of the documents from this shared text base, such as documentation for a standard version and documentation for a pro version of the same software. This is known as “cross media publishing”, “multi channel publishing”, “single source publishing” or just “single sourcing”.

Savings multiply with each future release and with each translation. In addition to the cost savings, there’s the saving in time.

By the way:
This web site is also an example of single source publishing. First, there’s the online version in HTML format; second there’s a printable brochure in PDF format.

From the technical point of view, single sourcing can be achieved quite simply, especially due to the widespread use of XML. The challenge is on the editorial side. All content must be structured and formulated in a way that guaranties that there won’t be any loss of quality in any of the generated versions. This requires some very special authoring expertise.

Since the mid 90s, we’ve been successfully using single sourcing in most software documentation projects, which made us one of the pioneers in this field (see also Publications and Presentations).

If you need to supply your documentation in multiple languages, we can find qualified translators and coordinate all translation work for you.