Any way to print from WebHelp output?

[kjohnson1]

Is it possible to print out the entire output from WebHelp by clicking print once, or do you have to print it out page by page, clicking through the TOC? Can you add some sort of button to the stylesheet to enable you to view the entire project, or something like that? Thanks!

[RamonS]

As far as I know, you can only print each topic. What you could do is add a link to a PDF, which then can be printed. Honestly, I rarely came across users who wanted to print the entire help. Some feel as that it is necessary, but they ended up with a binder on a shelf that never got used.

[LTinker68]

Honestly, I rarely came across users who wanted to print the entire help.

Perhaps not the entire help, but I've often printed a specific chapter or appendix that I'll either reference a lot or that has detailed information that I want to highlight or add handwritten notes.

[wbrisett]

Honestly, I rarely came across users who wanted to print the entire help. Some feel as that it is necessary, but they ended up with a binder on a shelf that never got used.

I think this is both industry and country dependent. One of our major clients for our product line is in Europe. The want PDFs so they can print the entire document set, read it on the train, and not have to carry around a laptop. One of the PDFs is so big I have to break it up into eight documents each with 2500-2800 pages. Way too big for a PDF in my opinion, but we're just doing what our customers are requesting. One of the reasons they don't want to go to a strict HTML/webhelp system is because they want to be able to print the entire thing.

Wayne

[RamonS]

So be it, but it still is funny. A decent laptop or tablet surely weighs less and uses less space than thousands of pages of paper in a ring binder. It is one of the cases where the customer wants something, even if it makes no sense to us. Besides that, printed copies are notoriously difficult to maintain. I've worked at companies on and off and one of the tasks assigned was to maintain their paper based security manuals. it was always disheartening to see that the last update done was by myself a year before. I don't like paper, too heavy, too expensive, too restrictive, and outdated as soon as the toner is fixed.

[wbrisett]

I suspect one of the other reasons our client likes paper is because they take notes on the printed page. They could do something similar with a PDF, but it's a bit more time consuming. However, with webhelp adding comments isn't really an option.

Wayne

[RamonS]

There are tools for annotating web pages, so that is possible. What is even better, one can easily search these notes, can't do that on paper, well, not as quickly at least.

[wbrisett]

Ramon:

I think in this case, it's more of what they are use to, verses what we have been doing.

Wayne