International Business Machines Corporation

Lee Anne Kowalski

John Raithel Hind

Robert E Moore

Jennifer E Heins

Andrew Richard Harding

Tricia Y Garrett

John David Russell

A method for customizing end-user or administrative software documentation such as installation instructions is provided. A software provider first collects computer system information for multiple computer sub-systems used by a customer. The collected computer system information comprises sub-system descriptions of each of the multiple computer sub-systems, software descriptions of all software that is currently residing in each of the multiple computer sub-systems, and hardware descriptions of all hardware that are allocated to each of the multiple computer sub-systems. The software provider then receives, from the customer, the name of new software that is to be installed in a user-selected computer sub-system. Based on the collected computer system information, the software provider determines which specific device in the user-selected computer sub-system should have the new software installed. At run time, variables in the installation instructions are replaced with a device's name.

Customized software documentation based on actual configuration values

A method and system in accordance with the present invention allows the help information to be shared independent of its invocation method, so that the information can be displayed in both integrated user assistance mechanisms and traditional online help windows. The method includes receiving an invocation of one of a plurality of user assistance mechanisms; and collecting help information from an information source, the information source comprising a structure indicating what portion of the information source is to be displayed based upon the invoked user assistance mechanism. With a method and system in accordance with the present invention, help authors place a metastructure or secondary structure in the information source. This secondary structure indicates which parts of the information source should be displayed by that particular integrated user assistance mechanism. A method and system in accordance with the present invention reads the information source and secondary structure and then takes the information defined by the secondary structure and passes it to the integrated user assistance mechanism to be displayed. For example, the same text information can be retrieved from one source and displayed in the following three places&mdash;a traditional online help window, inline text in a software dialog, inside a pop-up window over a control. With the method and system in accordance with the present invention, the author only has to maintain one source, so that both the integrated user assistance mechanism and the traditional online help will contain the accurate information.

Method and system for delivering integrated user assistance information and traditional help from the same source

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Lee Anne Kowalski