Many organizations don’t realize that they already own a Digital Media Publisher (DMP), nor what DMP can do for them. If you have Arbortext Publishing Engine, you have access to DMP.
If you have ever used the Help Center in Arbortext Editor or Windchill, you’ve used an instance of DMP (actually it is Digital Media Consumer (DMC), which is the application deployed for viewing the media image created by DMP).
Just the Facts
Arbortext Digital Media Publisher is a companion product to Arbortext Editor and Arbortext Publishing Engine. DMP gives you the tools you need to create a searchable media image from a set of documents that can be written to any digital media type such as a DVD or flash drive. You can run the resulting image (DMC) directly from the media, install it on your system, or deploy it over the Web.
Have it your way
The media image and the associated installation process can be highly customized to meet your individual delivery requirements.
Here’s the out-of-the-box home screen of the Arbortext Help Center:
And here’s an example of a home screen the from when I worked with The Raymond Corporation, for their service documentation:
Not only can the home screen be customized, but the functionality can also. In this example, when I clicked on iWAREHOUSE®; the table of contents expanded and the home screen now displays the iWAREHOUSE components.
The next step is selecting the component, which will display the technical documentation available:
Update a CD? Yes you can!
A unique feature of DMP is that it supports publishing updates to existing images, even DVD and CD-ROM! So you don’t need to issue a completely new CD when there is an update to your content. The update can be included with the existing content automatically when the user opens the DMC.
It doesn’t have to be a CD
The DMC output can take several forms:
- Install the image to a local disk or server and run it from there
- Create a DVD, CD, or save it to a Flash Drive
- Run directly from the media (DMC bundles a web server and includes an embedded web browser for Windows)
- Install from the media to your local computer
- Create a web application (WAR file) for your website
- Create an image ready to be used as an application’s online help system
And it doesn’t have to be HTML
DMP images can contain the following file types, in any combination:
- HTML
- Text
- XML
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Other Microsoft Office documents
- Any file types that can be viewed in a browser, including those that require browser plug-ins.
Find what you are looking for, and hide the rest
DMP provides the capability of full-text search, even within PDF and Microsoft Office content.
If your content is profiled*, users can elect to view only the information that pertains to them.
* Profiling is a means to provide specific content for a selected audience. Profiling sections of documents (or even individual words) lets you designate that certain sections (or words) contain information targeted at a specific audience or contain information that only applies when a particular set of circumstances exists.
