atw: Re: Vale technical writing?
- From: Howard Silcock <howard.silcock@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:41:26 +1100
I'm glad Geoffrey brought this topic up and find my self pretty much
sharing his reaction.
What concerns me most is that our profession is being invaded by
'technical' people who know next to nothing, and care even less, about
language and communication, while they fancy themselves as experts in XML
or PHP or whatever is the current fad. I don't have any objection to
single-sourcing or ePublishing or other kinds of online documentation -
provided *the author* is involved and makes the key design decisions about
his or her work. I found it really chilling to hear a talk at the last ASTC
(NSW) conference in which the speaker described how the web designers go
about grabbing what they delight in calling 'content' from anywhere and
re-using it to make their site look fancier and to show off what *they* can
do. One way they got 'content' was to grab the subject-matter experts and
interview them, then transcribe the interview, probably using Dragon
Naturally or some other automated transcription tool and, lo, there was
their article! Who needs to actually *think* about what goes into a
document, after all, let alone how to make it easy to digest and
understand? Now, *there's* one good reason to have accreditation for our
profession - to keep out these Neanderthals!
If I'm producing single-source documentation, I'm designing it for each
output form, with the needs of that audience in mind, using conditional
text to care of those different audiences. Some of these 'Neanderthals'
wouldn't even have a clue how to tailor a document for an audience - 'oh
yes, we can take this document and convert it to HTML; what do you mean it
was written for end users and we're giving it to administrators, it's
content and it fits the title, isn't it?'
Howard
On 27 February 2012 00:30, James Hunt <jameshunt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The XML guru Norman Walsh once wrote (in
> http://norman.walsh.name/2004/12/07/webarchPdf) as follows.
>
> "[W]eb browsers suck at printing. Never mind the fact that some browsers
> do a better job than others, they all suck. And CSS is never going to fix
> it. Did you hear me? CSS is never going to fix it. There are lots of
> programs that can produce more or less nice looking pages. TeX is an
> historical favourite, as is troff. More modern tools include various
> desktop publishing packages. In the XML world, the obvious tool is XSL, the
> Extensible Style Language, not the Transformation language. ¶
>
> "It's important to realise, however, that XSL is an incomplete answer. You
> see, XSL is a constraint language. In XSL, you can specify how large the
> pages are, how many columns they have, the sizes of fonts, and a myriad
> other parameters. What you don't specify directly are where the page breaks
> necessarily occur, or which words get hyphenated, or where exactly any of
> the actual marks are going to wind up on paper. ¶
>
> "The XSL Formatting Objects (FO) document is input to a formatter, a
> composition tool that renders marks on paper, typically these days in the
> form of a PDF file. Producing quality printed output is devilishly hard. Of
> all the various sorts of software systems I've encountered, a formatter is
> hands down the hardest to implement well. ¶
>
> "There are several commercial formatters out there that do an adequate
> job. There are also a few free formatters that do a someone less adequate
> job. I desperately wish the quality of the free formatters would improve,
> but see the previous paragraph." ¶
>
>
> ==========
>
> The problem remains as Walsh stated it eight years ago. It is not possible
> to produce from an XML--tagged document a PDF file that follows the
> typographical conventions applied to books. Browser--printed documents are
> rough-and-ready at best.
>
> XML is fine for web sites, where low standards of typographic presentation
> are acceptable, but we need a lot more than that for print. I know it is
> customary for XML evangelists to do a little hand--waving and claim that
> printed materials are just too old--fashioned to bother with any more, but
> I do not find such propositions convincing. Printed books have been around
> since 1450 or so, and the form has evolved greatly and will continue to
> evolve. There is still a lot of life left in print.
>
> XML will not take us anywhere.
>
> The emperor has no clothes, and the empire has no tailors.
>
>
> JH
>
Other related posts:
