Re: The End Of Technical Writing Was RE: Re: a different resume red flag

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I spend much more of my hands-on writing time wrestling with
tools and formatting than I would like to.  Part of this is because
I'm only getting to spend something like 15% of my time doing
hands-on doc work (most of my time is spent managing projects,
internal processes, personnel and budget issues, etc., etc), and
most of that is centered on developing the rough doc outlines
for new product types and jumping in when necessary to make
some minor last-minute change to a document we thought was
done because the original writer is now on a new project.  I also 
have every non-writer in the company who needs help with making 
a PDF or hunting down information in the document control system 
coming to me (again, because it would be too distracting for the 
writers to have to field these calls for help while they're dogging 
engineers for input or trying to beat a revenue deadline).  I'm quite 
certain that because of this my hands-on skills with FrameMaker 
have eroded quite a bit from my individual contributor days.
However, it also seems to me that some of the previous tools I
used at the time (such as Interleaf, RoboHelp in the winhelp days,
and even Word 2.0) were a helluva lot less of a pain to work with 
than the ones we're using now and took a lot less of the time writers
should be spending on research and other work than they do today.
Or maybe I've just advanced into the curmudgeonly phase of life.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "TechComm Dood" <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>

> I can't tell if your joking or serious. I hope you're joking. The
> tools aspect of our job is and should be small. If you're spending
> hours upon hours a day tweaking in your tools, the problem is that
> you're either not using them right or are using the wrong tools. The
> focus of our activities should be in developing (writing) usable
> documentation for our customers. The tools available to us to aid our
> writing and publishing processes are many and varied because there are
> many different needs depending on what you're doing. The right fit
> should yeild minimum impact on the work day and the work load.



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