17 languages = 2,380 WebHelp files

[Len.Hodgeman]

I have created a Help system for one of our software products that is localized into 16 languages (+ English). All languages are supported OOB, which means that help files for all languages are installed/uninstalled. Adding the help files to the build increased install time by a factor of 4, and uninstalll time by a factor of 10.

The actual # of html Content files is 38. That's quite a bit of overhead when transitioning from the previous single CHM file. I was able to delete about 100 images files from the output (after each compile), but am wondering if there are additional files that could be deleted - before compile would be nice.

How do you handle this?

[doc_guy]

Wow.

I don't have any advice, but I'm frankly impressed with the management requirements involved in a project like that. Wow.

[RamonS]

What type of installer do you use? How about stuffing all help files into a ZIP archive and first 'install' that, then use post install instructions to extract the content to the designated place. That may be faster than reading the individual files from an installer file that is on a CD or such. Just guessing here....
Also, what was the rationale to switch from CHM to WebHelp? Is it intended to ever run the help off a web server?