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.
Quick answer to the OP's question: most technical writers
do not use LaTeX because they do not know much about
it, and are sold WYSIWYG $$$-ware instead. In fact many
people have just never considered that anything other than
word-processor WYSIWYG is possible. Some of the
replies to this thread seam to bear this out IMHO.
Also people sometimes confuse two things; TeX
is a low(ish) level language for typesetting if you like,
but LaTeX (and any other higher set of semantically
derived macros / tags) is for describing content... the
underlying TeX engine then makes a good job of the
typeseting for you ___without you needing to intervene
very often___.
Currently it seems the world is moving toward WYSIWYM
(what you see is what you mean) due to XML's current
popularity. If you want semantic markup then you can argue
about whether, e.g., DocBook or LaTeX are "best" but really
it's not such a relevant thing to worry about. The point is
that semantic markup avoids you having to worry about
typesetting but concentrate on writing clearly; you then
need some technology to move from the semantically tagged
text to "beautiful" documents (or for that matter clear to
read web help).
Fred wrote:
+++
It's more important to use tools that allow the generation of
navigation and accessibility aids (e.g. hyperlinked ToC and index)
in our deliverables, that facilitate reuse and repurposing of
information, and that don't inhibit the ongoing revision and
expansion of information that is continually evolving. Most of
us don't need tools that are focused on producing a beautiful
but static fossil record of information.
+++
This is precisely why I use LaTeX; I get all of that automatically.
Printed and pdf docs (in a screen friendly form) are extracted from
perforce and rebuilt by a batch file. 23 manuals of an average of
100 pages, with automated indexing, toc, x-refs (including between
manuals). I can rebuild the entire docs set and update the docs on
the web site in minutes, whilst getting a coffee. This is why
computers were invented, folks, to do the tedious work.
I maintain all of this myself and could not possibly do
it using Word, Frame, or similar, only an XML/SGML or LaTeX
(or ConTeXt, etc). Admittedly you have to put some work in to get
good html results but then it's possible to say that about XML also.
LaTeX code is actually very readable compared to XML as well,
and of course there's no reason why you can't settle on some
XML style markup for your source and use TeX as one part of your
toolchain for producing output...
Christopher Gooch, Technical Author
LightWork Design, Sheffield, UK.
www.lightworkdesign.com
WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT - EDIT AND REVIEW, REDEFINED
Accelerate the document lifecycle with full online discussions and unique feedback-management capabilities. Unlimited, efficient reviews for Word
and FrameMaker authors. Live, online demo: http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
---
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.
