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dagnome
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Jun 4, 2006, 9:30 PM
Post #1 of 5
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Have you considered better installation documentation?
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Guys -
I really love your products, own several, recommend them all the time, and feel bad taking you to task, but have you taken a look at your online installation documentation for DocBuilder lately? Yowzah!
There are SO many missing or vague instructions that it is VERY easy to make a mistake during installation, especially if one is experienced with Article Manager, where the published data exists in a separate directory from the cgi-bin. YOu recommend putting everything in one directly, but if we do, it has to be under cgi-bin to get the scripts to run ( generally) and then the graphics won't show up!
Why not make life easier on all of us and rework your docs so that we just put the CGI exec files, templates and whatever other stuff the NEEDS to be there in /cgi-bin/ and put the graphics images and an empty /PUBLISH/ directory somewhere OTHER than inside of /cgi-bin/?
I'm not a newbie, and pride myself on being able to understand technical stuff, but installation documentation that is vague or misleading does not do justice to the quality of the software your company creates, nor the caliber of your technical support -
so - maybe a few hours spent reworking the online installation documents?
PLEASE? We'd all really appreciate it, I'm sure...
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dagnome
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Jun 4, 2006, 11:43 PM
Post #2 of 5
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Re: [dagnome] Have you considered better installation documentation?
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Might also be cool if you could give us a quick guide on how, for example, you produce the DocBuilder documentation - making those kind of document trees do not come automatically with this software, but I can likely speak for lots of us that it is your DocBuilder presentations online that really SELL this software - so, can you make it easy for us to produce these kinds of powerful results?
thanks - Bruce
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Donna
Staff
/ Moderator
Jun 5, 2006, 10:36 AM
Post #3 of 5
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Re: [dagnome] Have you considered better installation documentation?
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Hi there!
The problem is, many servers do not have or require a cgi-bin directory. The instructions are a little vague, because there are many, many different server setups that might require different steps. We try to write the installation instructions to apply to as many different server setups as possible. There is a mention that you may need to put the scripts into the cgi-bin directory if necessary -- but not all (in fact, increasingly few) servers actually require this anymore.
We also offer a free installation so that if you're having any trouble, we're happy to pop in there and install it for you. :)
However, I will pass along your concerns, and hopefully we can clarify any instructions that could be confusing to new users.
We also have instructions already for how to setup the "tabs" in DocBuilder, like what we have for the Article Manager documentation! It's considered an advanced tutorial, but here's how you can do it:
1. First we created 3 directories; /user/, /admin/, and /install/
2. Next we created 3 HTML files, each file has the same name, tabs.html. This was the file that the images of the tabs were stored in. There are 3 different variations of the image. One with the "user" button highlighted and the other two buttons not highlighted, one with the "admin" button highlighted and the other two not, and one with the "install" button highlighted and the other two not. Each of the tabs.html files has one of these 3 variations. (Each button, of course, links to the published content of it's document group. e.g. the admin button will have a link to the index.html file in the /admin/
directory.)
3. We then uploaded the "user" highlighted tabs.html file into the /user/ directory, the "admin" tabs.html into the /admin/ directory, and the "install" tabs.html into the /install/ directory.
4. We then added a Server Side Include call to the /templates/doc_menu.html file that calls the tabs.html file. <!--#include file="tabs.html" -->
So change this:
<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100% height=100%> <tr>
<td valign="top" width=100%>
<table width=100% border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0>
<tr><td rowspan=99><img src="$imageurl$spacer.gif" width=5>
To this:
<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100% height=100%> <tr>
<td valign="top" width=100%>
<!--#include file="tabs.html" -->
<table width=100% border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing=0>
<tr><td rowspan=99><img src="$imageurl$spacer.gif" width=5>
This means that each document groups menu file will include the tabs.html file within its respective directory (e.g. the "Admin" document group will include the admin tabs.html file within the /admin/ directory.
And that's it.
If you have any other questions or comments please feel free to let me know. :)
Donna
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MikeB
Staff
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Jun 6, 2006, 4:29 PM
Post #5 of 5
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Re: [dagnome] Have you considered better installation documentation?
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Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the post! 
To have all of the menus expanded by default in DocBuilder you can actually have a look at this forum post here:
http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=2061#2061
Once the menus are fully expanded by following this post, it's just a matter of finding this line of code in the /templates/_doc_menu.html template file:
<img src="$imageurl$node_plus.gif" id="node$num$_img" height=9 width=9 border=0>
This will remove the image that is output beside the names of your documents.
I'd recommend making a backup copy of this file before you make any changes.
I hope this helps and if you have any other questions feel free to let me know!
Cheers,
Mike Briggs - Product Specialist
support@interactivetools.com
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(This post was edited by MikeB on Jun 6, 2006, 4:29 PM)
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