[9] With the eclipsing of MS-DOS by graphical user interfaces, help files went from being unreadable text along the bottom of the screen to hypertext systems such as WinHelp.
On-screen help interfaces allowed software companies to cease the printing of large, expensive help manuals with their products, reducing costs for both producer and consumer.
[11] In the mid-1990s, several firms began creating and using single-source content for technical documentation (Boeing Helicopter, Sikorsky Aviation and Pratt & Whitney Canada) and user manuals (Ford owners manuals) based on tagged SGML and XML content generated using the Arbortext Epic editor with add-on functions developed by a contractor.
[12] The concept behind this usage was that complex, hierarchical content that did not lend itself to discrete componentization could be used across a variety of requirements by tagging the differences within a single document using the capabilities built into SGML and XML.
Pratt & Whitney, likewise, was able to tag up to 20 subsets of its jet engine manuals in single-source files, calling out the desired version at publication time.
As consumption of information products rises and the number of target audiences expands, so does the work of developers and content creators.
Within the industry of software and its documentation, there is a perception that the choice is to embrace single-source publishing or render one's operations obsolete.