Re: Mif2Go vs. WWP

["Steve Kubis" <steve.kubis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Having used MIF2GO for over three years, I'll throw my opinion into the
mix.

We've never used WWP. When we were looking for a conversion tool to go
from Frame to RTF for WinHelp, WebWorks was just too expensive to even
try. We found out about MIF2GO, had a couple of samples converted by
Omni Systems, and decided the results looked promising. We couldn't be
happier with our decision.

MIF2GO does an excellent job producing RTF for use as a Word document,
RTF for WinHelp, HTML, HTML for HTML Help, and XHTML. If it isn't
already there, XML support will almost certainly be added. MIF2GO is
fast. The MIF2GO components are very efficient. They take up very little
disk space and run quickly. This allows the product to scale extremely
well. Here's an example:

We're producing an HTML Help file from about 300 FrameMaker files. The
final HTML Help file will have over 5000 topics (i.e. 5000+ HTML files).
MIF2GO can produce all of the HTML in about twenty minutes, running on a
Pentium II 400. Small help files with fewer than 1000 topics are
produced in just a couple of minutes. Tiny help files with less than 100
topics are produced instantly.

MIF2GO produces great HTML. The folks at Omni Systems are true believers
in standards. All of the HTML produced by MIF2GO complies with the W3C
standards. The support for cascading style sheets is superb. If you
choose, every paragraph can have a "class" tag applied, allowing a CSS
to take perform formatting on the resulting HTML. It's amazingly
flexible. I used to wish that HTML formatting could be as flexible as
WinHelp formatting. With the CSS support in MIF2GO, it is!=20

The HTML for HTML Help is excellent. All of the nasty stuff to allow
secondary windows, A-links, the index and TOC are all taken care of for
you. You can make some nice HTML Help files very quickly. MIF2GO saves
tremendous amounts of work in this area.

MIF2GO is flexible. The folks at Omni have added lots of customization
capability to MIF2GO. Hypertext markers, HTML Macros and JavaScripts
allow virtually anything to be added to the HTML output. You don't need
to use any of these customization features. They aren't required to get
good results, but the capabilities can be really helpful to add cool
features to your HTML files.

MIF2GO does have a learning curve. You'll get HTML or RTF as soon as you
run the product. However, you will need to tweak the configuration file
to get exactly the output that you want. If you send some samples to
Omni, they'll send back the configuration file they used to produce the
output. That's a good place to start. Once you get a project set up, you
can just use it. No adjustments are necessary. If you do have questions,
you can always e-mail to them to Omni. The support is superb.

MIF2GO is cost-effective. It starts out at $295 for a single copy. The
cost per seat goes down as you purchase more seats. Our department was
able to buy a couple dozen seats for the price of just a few WWP seats.

If this sounds like an endorsement of MIF2GO, I guess it is. We're so
happy with our MIF2GO decision that we haven't bothered to look at
anything else. If you're looking for a Frame to HTML or RTF conversion
tool, you should give MIF2GO a look.

Steve


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