atw: Re: XML - a requirement for a TechWriter looking forwork?
- From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:02:45 +1000
Hi austechies.
Tony is right when he says that XML is already pretty much everywhere. But
this is not the point. The current thread began with a question as to
whether XML is "becoming part of a requirement for a Tech Writer", and the
simple answer is that, despite the apparent ubiquity of XML, you no more
need to know XML to be technical writer than you need to know HTML to
produce a web page. And this is not likely to change in the near future.
A parallel: there are scores of applications out there that run on C# and
.NET, but that doesn't mean that we need to know C# and .NET to use them;
likewise, there are scores of applications out there that use XML, but the
users don't need to know XML to use them. To take one of Tony's examples:
journalists use XML to produce your daily newspaper, but journalists don't
need to know XML to produce their stories. All the XML is behind the scenes.
Tony also mentioned GMAIL. It seems like everyone on the planet has a GMAIL
account...but probably 99.9% of GMAIL users happily get by without a clue as
to what XML is or does. In a later email, Tony criticises me for saying that
you don't need XML to convert Visio files to Illustrator files; but again
this is missing the point of this thread. There may well be XML code sitting
behind the format-conversion routines, but the user DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW XML
to convert a Visio file to an Illustrator file.
So to go back to Nikki's question: no, you don't need to know about XML to
work as a technical writer (despite XML code sitting behind all modern
authoring tools). In the near future, you will probably enhance your
employment prospects if you know something about structured authoring (for
Tony is right in saying that more and more documentation will be
structure-based not format-based, but certainly not all). But structured
authoring and XML are not the same thing. And even if, perchance, we have to
interact directly with XML (because of a poor choice of authoring tools)
then we would (as some do now) interact with it through an interface that
takes away the necessity and pain of learning XML itself...exactly as we now
build HTML pages using an interface application (such as Dreamweaver or
FrontPage) that saves us the trouble of having to learn anything about HTML.
(Yes, Peter Martin, it's good to know some HTML if you encounter a bug in a
Dreamweaver file; but, crikey, you surely can't expect me to learn C# to
help me when I encounter a bug in, say, MYOB Accounting Plus. A nice to
have, surely; but not a necessity. Put another way, and keeping to the
thrust of this thread, you wouldn't say that knowing C# is becoming part of
a requirement for a bookkeeper on the grounds that there are bugs in
bookkeeping software.)
So, Nikki, just as a web designer can get away without knowing anything
about CSS inheritance, a technical writer can, and will, be able to get away
without needing to know what, say, #PCDATA means.
Cheers
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: (+61 3) 9596 3456
F: (+61 3) 9596 3625
W: http://www.abelard.com.au
-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Anthony Self
Sent: Wednesday, 10 September 2008 3:41 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: XML - a requirement for a TechWriter looking forwork?
Dear Nikki and all
When Dave Halls advised technical writers to "learn XML", he was giving good
counsel. Not wanting to put words in his mouth, his more explicit advice
might have been to "learn the basics and principles of XML so you can
understand what it all means".
XML is bigger than Ben Hur. It is a bigger initiative than the World Wide
Web. XML is a set of building blocks for the categorisation, storage and
retrieval of all human knowledge. It is impossible to learn everything there
is to know about XML, because of the length and breadth of the technology.
XML has already affected many aspects of our personal and business lives.
Journalists use it to produce your newspaper. iPods use it for podcasting.
Amazon uses it to help you choose books to buy. Bloggers use it. GMail uses
it to provide a richer Web mail client. RoboHelp uses it to store its
project file settings. OpenOffice uses it to store office documents in an
international standard format. Scholars use it to understand Sumerian
literature. The Bureau of Stats uses it to distribute census data. And so
on.
In the documentation field, authoring tools are built around XML. If your
tool is not XML-based, it's out-of-date, and probably about to be redundant.
Frame is XML-based. Flare is XML-based. Word 2007 is XML-based. OpenOffice
is XML-based. AuthorIt is XML-based. Firefox is XML-based.
It is possible that you can stumble on, perhaps even using Word or Frame,
and be blissfully unaware of what XML is. Perhaps you can continue to make a
living for many years to come without understanding one jot of XML. But Dave
Halls' talk and advice related to professional development. If you want to
progress in your profession, you must understand XML and its impacts. There
are more relevant changes to our working mode just around the corner. Moving
from style-based authoring to structured authoring is perhaps the biggest
change. The return on investment of structured authoring using DITA (another
XML-based technology/methodology) is potentially enormous. At the moment,
the tools haven't quite caught up to the technology, so it is a little early
for many organisations to move to this approach, but in a year or two,
everyone will be moving in that direction.
You won't understand DITA and structured authoring unless you understand
(the basics and principles of) XML. Because XML is so big, it's best to
start now, rather than try to catch on when it's too late!
Finally, I have had the pleasure of working on a number of DITA projects, as
well as teaching it, and it is an extremely rewarding thing to work with as
a writer.
Tony Self
>>> "Nikki Ward" <Nikki.Ward@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 10/09/08 9:32 AM >>>
Hi all,
If you have some time, I would like some feedback on this presentation
supplied to the QLD Tech Writers group.
I just thought it rather interesting that "Learn XML" is becoming part of a
requirement for a Tech Writer who is looking for work.
...
-----
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