TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
rewilli -at- lexmark -dot- com wrote:
>
> i am fairly new to the list and to tech writing, i have a strong computer
> science background (ironically that is how i am listed in new committees...(new
> blood strong cs background) i am highly interesting in working with open source
> type of stuff. if anything i want to gain experience in the tech writing field,
> what kind of procudure would i go through to find a project of some type to work
> with?
Open Source Writer's Group http://www.oswg.org is likely the best starting
point.
They collect both resumes and project requirements lists, available over the
web.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. Each a slightly different approach. Each with a .org
website.
Look at any of the major cross-platform open source projects. Apache, Mozilla,
GNOME, Gnumerics, www.fsf.org.
The main tool you'd need to look at is the DocBook SGML DTD (document type
definition, essentially a set of tag definitions) which most of the above
groups use for single-source markup. You can then generate HTML, PDF and
several other formats automatically from the DocBook source.
