Re: Directions for tomorrow's techwriting

["Simon North" <Simon -dot- North -at- synopsys -dot- com>]

Bruce Byfield wrote: 
 
> XML may help in this task, if the company's documentation is organized
> properly, but I find it hard to think of it as anything more than
> another addition to the tool kit. I've seen the introduction of
> several tools, and been happy enough to have them, and I greet XML in
> the same way, but I don't see it as the great change in direction that
> many peole claim. No matter what the tools, writers seem to end up
> doing much the same thing. They may do them better, but the basic task
> doesn't seem to change. 

As a confirmed XML evangelist myself (read my books!) I can't help feeling it's almost ironic that I seem to have 
spent the last 3 years or so trying to debunk some of the hype around XML and largely agreeing with you. XML *is* 
just another addition to the toolbox. It isn't even a very new addition, and it actually does a lot less than some 
of the tools we already had (SGML/HyTime). To compound matters, some of the things that it tries to do that 
we were able to do with the 'old' tools it does so appallingly badly that it's almost a crime (compare XML 
namespaces with HyTime Architectural Forms, namespaces are one of the worst half-brained pieces of amateur 
hacked code that ever disgraced the W3C pages).  Sadly, XML is living proof of the old adage that it isn't the 
best technological solution that wins. 

XML's position, however, doesn't deny the *potential* for change in our profession. Whether the basic task 
changes or not can depend on what you interpret the basic task to be. From my own point of view, yes, the 
basic authorship skills of information creation, organisation and delivery are still there; it's just the information 
has become more complex, the tools for organisation more powerful and the choices for delivery much more 
sophisticated. 

However, we are increasingly involved in usability and interface design (or at least my team is). At Synopsys we 
have been gradually erasing the distinction between software developer and documentation developer. Many of 
now consider a basic knowledge of at least one scripting language as almost essential. [I certainly would hesitate 
to recruit someone who couldn't write HTML code (and preferably raw code, not the poor excuse for mangled 
markup that comes out of some of these user-friendly tools). ] Upcoming developments in GUI development are 
giving us new ways of more tightly integrating documentation into the software code, which pushes us even 
further into the software development camp. Meanwhile, coming at it from  another angle, some of us have 
skills we have acquired from documentation activities (such as SGML DTD/Schema development) that are in 
increasing demand in software development. 

This isn't the only area where skills we've acquired as "documentation engineers" are finding a new home (and 
that was the gist of my recent mail about Topic Maps). The Web is currently the largest full-text search 
document in existence. It's a nice prototype for the real thing, but frankly pretty useless as it is. The latest hype 
is the so-called "Semantic Web", which Tim Berners-Lee has been extolling for years. I personally consider it to 
be a bit of an idealistic pipedream, but some people have started to listen and some of the parts are being built. 
An essential part of a working Semantic Web relies on the organisation of masses of disjoint information into a 
navigable whole. The only people currently working on this are the knowledge experts, information scientists, 
topic map developers, ontologists ... academics and scientists. We, the technical writers/authors, whatever, 
have many years of practical experience at doing this. I'm not saying we're very good at it, but we have a lot of 
hands on experience and that does count for something. That is, I believe, the direction for tomorrow's tech 
writing ... making sense out of chaos.  I guess it *is* the same basic task we've always done, but never on this 
scale.   

Simon North. 


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