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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27871
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The place where I work uses a home-brewed XML to HTML to CHM solution. We are reliant on the CHM's search engine (which frankly, is awful). We do not have a landing page, as much as a first page with a few generic links.

And yes, access to our help system is behind paywalls and often our clients do not have ready access to the internet; so the help system has to be completely local and not server-dependent. While never ideal, it is a necessity for our products and should not necessarily diminish your final product.

Having helped develop and work with a custom-built xml structure (we even have an XML programmer on staff), I strongly recommend against it. DITA provides a lot of interesting options and there are many good (and free) resources out there. Since there are far more options available to you than custom-built xml structures, I strongly suggest researching all the options before you settle on a structure.

I second the idea of a landing page with a really good search engine on the back-end. While it won't be used by customers after the initial exploration, it can greatly assist that first run through the documentation.

Video tutorials (embedded in the documentation or linked to it) are another great customer option. They've been very popular among consumers of our products.

Adobe Acrobat typically takes you to the word you're looking for and has done so for quite a few versions. If, however, your PDF generation process is turning everything to graphics instead of text, then making sure you're generating text is another way to improve the search in the PDF.

Original score: 0