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.
Subject:Re: 10 Things All Technical Writers Should Do From:Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:41:23 -0800 (PST)
Andrew:
Data Flow Diagrams are a tool for documenting manual
and/or automated procedure. In the Yourdon DFDing
class that I took, the instructor made clear the point
that DFDs were first utlized over fifty years before
the computer was invented.
Back in the early 1890's there were no software
functions, just people performing tasks.
(FYI: Documenting procedure is a the major thing that
TWs do.)
What makes DFDs so uniquely powerful at documenting
procedure is that they result in a natural
partitioning of a system of interacting tasks. All
other procedural modeling techniques - including Use
Cases - result in a forced artifical partitioning of a
system of interacting tasks.
Tony Markos
--- Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
Ed Yourdon (Data Flow Diagrams are for documenting
procedure) says that it is ninty-eight percent
(98%) of what needs to be done. Ninty-eight percent
of anything is alot!
> Ed was talking about software development. Which is
> not the same as technical
> writing. While the two share some common practices,
> as virtually every writer
> likes to remind us - programming != writing.
>
> Andrew Plato
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
www.yahoo.com
ROBOHELP X5 - SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION!
RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward in Help authoring technology, featuring all new Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! View an online demo: http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
