Tools supporting this approach typically store content in XHTML or other XML formats and support content reuse, management, and the dynamic assembly of personalized information.
This began with the use of manuals, but those were not widely well received as did not meet the accelerated speed at which the users desired information.
[3] In 1998, John M. Carroll developed the writing concept of minimalism which provided shorter and more streamlined instruction for the user to access quickly.
Online help's content is topic-oriented, using conceptual and procedural topics to build its structure.
[5] In 2005, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture was published to help authors create topic-based structured content.