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> When I suggest that there will be fewer tech writers
> in the future, I mean that lots of work tech writers
> do adds very little value.
I disagree completely.
> For example, doing research. Yes, seeking information
> is largely, not completely, a duplication of someone
> else's work.
Partly, but then developers read specs, an accountant
looks at the numbers, reporters interview people, ...
Methinks any job more intellectual than ditch digger
will involve some time learning things others already
know.
> I suggest that someday developers/engineers will not
> mind (or will get paid for) storing information so
> that a tech writer can find it, such as in an XML
> file/template. That way, the search is no longer a
> search. The information is all nicely stacked in a
> place the writer can get to.
I think they always have been paid for this. Comments
or man pages or specs are part of the job. Some do it
well, some abysmally.
Of course, that still leaves work for us. Consider
my FreeS/WAN docs, for example. (www.freeswan.org)
The developers were all literate (all university
grads, one PhD and one O'Reiily author) and they
wrote man pages for all commands, file formats and
library routines. I still had lots to do.
It is one thing to write terse documentation usable
by another programmer maintaing your code or by an
expert user who already understands the concepts in
whatever domain you're working in, It is a different
thing to fully document a complex product, making it
usable by a far larger group.
> After all, don't we tech writers spend a lot of time
> and get paid a lot of money for seeking information
> that already exists? It seems fairly absurd to pay for
> something twice. The absurdity just hasn't registered
> to most companies yet.
As I see it, we get paid to organize that information
and make it accessible. This may include translation
from developer jargon to more normal English, or in
some cases providing a glossary for the useful jargon.
It almost always includes adding task-oriented stuff
written more-or-less from the user viewpoint, because
the feature-oriented view of developers isn't all that
helpful to the user.
Often, it includes providing, or linking to, quite a
bit of background material. Your CAD program may get
used by a junior draughtsman, your accounting package
by a clerk, your wonderful new chip by a new-grad
engineer, my Linux security stuff by a sys admin who
knows only Windows, ... If you want the product to
succeed in those cases, you had better provide at
least some background material and a lot of links.
> This XML or whatever storage place can eventually,
> through the work of tech writers, be made readable by
> end users. It would be like a functional spec that
> became transparent and intuitive enough to be readable
> by anyone.
My first reaction is that if you can do that, then
you can print it in a large font and have pigs tow
it across the sky for everyone to see.
Actually, though, it isn't impossible, just hard.
Neither good functional specs nor good user docs
are easy, and doing both in one doc is really tricky.
I'm inclined to say the functional spec should be
included in the reference section of the user manual,
if only because this forces the developers to update
the spec instead of making undocumented changes to
it. I think you need a lot of other stuff too, though.
> So I'm not saying that tech writers will disappear
> altogether, just a high percentage of us.
Methinks our role may change some, but we won't become
obsolete anytime soon.
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