atw: Re: Vale technical writing?
- From: Bill Parker <bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:42:44 +0800
Christine,
I wonder indeed why "old school" sounds derogatory ( I know you did not mean it
that way) but it just sounds as if the march of high tech tech is leaving some
of us behind. Well, I protest. In my previous post about offshore engineers
and scientists in the FPSO area, XML is about as far from their daily lives as
a snowball in Karratha.
I work in another area as a volunteer ( bush fire brigade) and recently chaos
has reigned because some clever salesman has "sold" the idea of changing radio
comms from VHF mid band to VHF high band. Why? Because we can and "it's the
future". Now we have a far more complex system that both serves well and fails
spectacularly. And this on the fire ground!
My take on this is that culturally archaic stuff works. We are reaching the
stage when technology rules and the blokes who need it to work on the ground
are stuffed.
If somebody says, why not XML? I might say, let's get the sentence structure
right first and not get tied up in the arcane.
Bill
On 26/02/2012, at 5:28 PM, Christine Kent wrote:
> It’s a bigger issue than even Tony is saying, and I see XML as a step on a
> path rather than a destination.
>
> Publishing failed to grasp the significance of the changes being brought
> about by technology and is going broke fast. Those changes are not just about
> the tools used. For example, in publishing, it is not just about putting a
> novel into a format for a reader. It is about questioning if, as a society,
> novels are morphing into something else, and if so, what?
>
> When you try to convert anything you have written for paper format to some
> kind of on-line format, you realise that you have to change what you want to
> communicate and the way you communicate it as well as the tools you will use
> to communicate it through. The form IS, to a certain extent, determining the
> function.
>
> My personal learning on this level is that everything I write must be in
> screen sized bites, no matter what I might prefer, and my suspicion is that
> we have bred and trained a generation that is only capable of both
> structuring and decoding information that IS in screen sized bites.
>
> While there are still “old school” people who read novels, who can read
> manuals particularly for high level technical information, and who do learn
> something in a classroom, there will be some need for materials produced the
> way we produce them now, but many of us are approaching retirement age and
> when we are gone, what will best serve the generations following us through?
>
> I personally have no idea where this will end with both technical writing and
> instructional design, but I do know that the current forms for both are
> culturally archaic, in that much of what we do serves little or no real
> purpose. We all know the door stop jokes, and we also know that much of the
> training we deliver does not result in well trained users of whatever. I
> would not be expressing Tony’s certainty that XML is the future, but I am
> certain that the past is not the future.
>
> I wish is could be. I don’t much like this new world. But I imagine we are
> stuck with it.
>
> Christine
>
> From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Margaret Hassall
> Sent: Sunday, 26 February 2012 12:46 PM
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: atw: Re: Vale technical writing?
>
> Hi Geoffrey and Austechies,
>
> Sounds like a great talking point to me, and I'll probably ask Tony some of
> those questions at the presentation (when I hear more than just the outline).
>
> But I think the issue has been around for a while - even before XML and DITA
> arrived. For a long time we have had the "content is king" versus "quality
> or crappy content" versus "but it needs to be formatted" arguments (TECHWR-L
> archives contain hundreds of posts on this and similar topics).
>
> Good format can help usability, readability, and make content far more
> accessible, and crappy content is NOT better than no content at all. But I
> have seen way too many people so focused on getting a format to work that
> they run out of time to get the content right. Their hand-crafting produces
> good looking documents but is their content up to standard and can it be
> re-used?
>
> I now have to deliver information in many different channels - old fashioned
> PDFs for traditional user guides, online help (CHM, webhelp), wikis, and now
> I'm looking at eReaders and their various formats. My first efforts with
> eReaders sent me back to hand-crafting. With new delivery formats coming
> about all the time, I don't think we have time for hand-crafting any more.
>
> And output is not the only issue: I have to build many documents using input
> from a wide range of people - I'd like to streamline this workflow as much as
> possible. I often undo their careful tweaking so that I can use their content
> with other work.
>
> What I'm looking for from the presentation is to find out if tools have
> evolved enough so that they will allow me to concentrate on the CONTENT and
> workflow without having to worry too much about the formatting. Like the car
> drivers of old, I think it is a fair question to ask if I'd be prepared to
> put up with a simpler look if it meant my information could go further. While
> the output may not be as "whizz-bang" as I can create with other tools at the
> moment, this doesn't mean it will always be like that.
>
> While I agree that delivering information to people that is relevant,
> readable, and usable is an overriding technical writing goal, surely we
> should always be looking for ways to make that process more efficient.
>
> I'll be at the talk, and happy to discuss this further.
>
> Margaret - wearing her Tech Writer hat, but acknowledges her President, ASTC
> Vic hat as well.
>
>
> On 26 February 2012 11:33, Geoffrey Marnell wrote:
> Hi austechies
>
> Some of you will have received, as I did, an invitation to attend an ASTC
> presentation by DITA evangelist Dr Tony Self. Here is the outline of the
> presentation Tony intends to give, exactly as received in the invitation:
>
> <snip
> ...
> ...>
>
> We write to impart practical information to people who need it, and in ways
> that maximise their uptake of that information. That's our overriding goal
> as technical writers, and it's why most of us do fuss about issues of
> readability and usability. So why should we adopt any technology that limits
> us in our ability to meet that overriding goal? Technology should not be our
> master; it is the needs of our readers that is paramount.
>
>
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