RE: STC Letter to the Editor

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Plato [mailto:gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com]
[...]
> > Same with other content topics. So the STC choses to focus on those 
> > topics that actually benefit the majority of its members. 
> This appears 
> > to be a very well-founded approach, especially given that 
> there are a 
> > large number of separate societies such as the IEEE where 
> all kinds of 
> > content can be discussed.
> 
> Like I said - call it the Society of Documentation or Society 
> of Technical
> Presentation. Since content isn't dicussed, then its not a society of
> communication. 

I don't see what's so hard to grasp.

It's the society for HOW technical info is communicated.
Very probably, it should have more discussion/instruction/whatever 
about how technical info is learned/gathered, but the other 
main thing that people in this list have in common is 
that they each need to figure out how best to communicate 
what they have learned.  Supposedly, STC addresses that.
I occasionally crack one of their publications when it 
arrives, and peek inside (if I can't find something I'd 
rather be doing...), and I occasionally learn something 
useful or interesting from them.

By the way, in your reference in another message in this 
[becoming interminable] thread, you suggested that some of 
the most valuable info you'd read had been found in a 
plain, vanilla text file.

Fine.

Was that a text file that print out as a roughly 
300-page manual?

Or, was that a text file with some last-minute or 
quick-start "README" stuff, comprising perhaps 100 lines 
or less?

When the info is so concise that it can be scanned in 
one or three screensfull, it can usefully be presented 
in a nekkid text file with minimal formatting (although, 
for more than a few lines, I'd tend to at least put some 
all-caps headings and some indentation in it, to make 
reading easier....).  When it's hundreds of pages of 
explanation and sequential steps and provisos and warnings 
and ... and... then it benefits from some of that page 
layout and formatting stuff.

You know, visual cues, consistent handling of similar 
or related elements, chunking? Heirarchy, to show 
what's more important that what else, what's pre-
requisite to what else, what's optional, etc.?
Numbering and other little helpfulnesses like that?
Even, adhering to expected standards (like MIL and 
other specs for data presentation).

Those are all presentation issues, and they can be 
very important. In fact, they can be deal-breakers.

I must admit to fondling fonts, now and then. Every 
year or two, the Marketing department asserts itself 
and changes the look of our 'customer-directed documentation', 
and that means that I am presented with a choice of:

1) make my docs look reasonably closely like the ones 
   that marketing creates, for the current/new product 
   line, or...

2) hand them over for the graphic-designer guy to 
   massage into that same compliance.

The trick is that I don't get to move the product 
schedule ahead by a week or two, to give the graphic 
guy the time to work his magic before the immovable 
deadline.  Therefore, I default to option 1.  Go figure.
Fonts and layouts get fondled.  Horrors. 
If I don't already know how to do something, in that 
vein, then I have to spend some time figuring it out.
Double-horrors!  Not just font-fondling, but LEARNING 
to font-fondle!   Eeeek!

YMMV

/kevin

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