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.
Subject:Re: anyone else in the same boat? From:"Dan Roberts" <droberts63 -at- earthlink -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 27 Dec 2000 05:39:01 -0500
Perhaps I'm mixing apples and quartz here, but I think I might be confused.
Bruce writes...
>You
>can really only lay the foundations for standards until you are well
>into the actual work.
>
>For example, I've designed more templates than I can remember.
>However, I have yet to
>do a template that didn't require a few tweaks as I went along.
>
>How could I possibly know
>exactly what's needed until I'm well into the material? Based on my
>experience and my own writing quirks, I can anticipate many of my
>needs, but never all of them. Of course, if I absolutely had to, I
>could stick to my original design work. However, then I would be
>twisting the work to fit the design instead of the other way about.
>I'd also be causing myself extra trouble, when one of the main
>points of effective design is save trouble.
During the first 7 years of my TW life (and a few years before), I became pretty
adept at using a proprietary GML tagging language, similar to HTML but much more
advanced, to produce documentation. The GML was quite well thought out, and
allowed for numberous possibilities of information structures.
Post-GML environment, I've been in various organizations that used similar
approached, using a WYSIWIG style/template structure to achieve similar results.
And, it seems that the WYSIWIG environment struggles, by using various styles
(eg, bullet item, bullet item continued, nested bulet, nested bullet continued,
etc) to emulate the structure of the GML documents. And I have, from time to
time, realized that I could more precisely define a piece of information by an
applied style (eg, " no, that's not really a definition term and description,
it's a parameter term and description") and applied formatting in response (eg,
so snug up the parm term to the parm desc, and apply Keep with Next to the
ParmTerm, so we dont get a bad break).
So, what I'm wondering, Bruce, is whether you've discovered structures that
would not fit into a predetermined GML/SGML/HTML/XML structure, or if you
discovered that your templates didn't cover all the potential uses for those
types of structures (eg, "oh shoot, I didn't know I'd need to use a parm list
inside a list! Now I gotta tweak the parm list style"). In other words, were
your tweaks prompted because of a new information structure, or because you
didnt realize an information structure might be used in a particular situation?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver! (STC Discount.)
**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY. http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.
Take XML and Tech Writing courses online! Our instructor-led courses
(4-6 hrs/wk) give you "hands on" experience at your convenience. STC members
get 20% off! http://www.online-learning.com/index.html.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
