While earlier help systems may have worked because they contained less information or fewer topics, the newer help systems are turning remarkably counter-productive in spite of the fact that they incorporate much more information than their prototypes did. The main reason that these combined resources fail to work is that the increasing volume of information is still managed using outdated and inadequate indexing and organization tools that are as ineffective on large sets of documents as they were successful on small ones. Thus, while the information itself is helpful, it is frequently buried by hundreds of irrelevant hits returned by the search engine or by the bewildering Table of Contents (TOC). Could this situation be fixed? You'll have to read the article to find out what role XML can play in solving this problem.
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