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.
Your current file naming convention is a common one found in many technical
pursuits. The only detail I might add is that each new editor should save
the incremented version as a read-only file. Anyone who can't follow the
simple convention you described is going to have trouble finding work at my
company -- and I suspect other companies as well.
Dan Goldstein
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Tibbs [mailto:smileypv -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 12:29 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: file naming conventions
Hi, everyone! This is my first time on the list; I am
a student in technical communication at The University
of Alabama in Huntsville. I have my M.A. in English
already, but I am back now working on a technical
communication certificate so I can find a job here in
Huntsville. I need some input from everyone.
I am working on a project for my class on file
management and naming for a major editing project one
of the undergraduate technical editing classes
participate in every spring. The project, called IPT
(Integrated Product Team) from here on out, allows
engineering, business, communications, and English
students to participate in a real-world project while
still in college. The engineering students design a
product for a customer (last year it was a missile for
AMCOM), the business students help them manage budget
and marketing, and the communications and English
students collect resumes from all participants and
publish a booklet and website containing those
resumes.
The problem is, our naming conventions were confusing
students. A file name looked like this:
TibbsJS_rev_00.doc for the original version. Every
time someone edited the document, the number should be
incremented. We wanted to preserve each version of the
document for practice with editing and using FTP (to
download and upload resumes to the appropriate places
for the authors to look at). However, because of
inexperience and bugs within the system, very few
participants understood the file naming conventions.
We had a terrible time trying to teach everyone and
manage the files at the same time.
I am looking for, from all of you, suggestions for how
to redo the file naming system to simplify it for this
year's students. If you need more info, just ask. I
hope I did not overwhelm anyone with all of the info I
have here. Thanks!
NEED TO PUBLISH YOUR FRAMEMAKER CONTENT ONLINE?
?Mustang? (code name) is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to Web, intranets, and online Help.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! See a live demo that
will take your breath away: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
---
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.
