Re: Recommended apps to learn as a new tech writer...

[Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

My advice is to start by focusing on your certificate and not on
learning tools. Yo uvery well may learn tools in the course of getting
the certificate.

Tools is holy wars territory - everyone uses a different set, and
everyone is positive theirs is the best choice.

I think it'd be to your benefit to focus more on content development
processes, markup and structuring concepts (HTML, XML, MAML, etc.),
workflows (single-source documentation development, database
approaches, stand-alone authoring concepts, etc.), and design/layout,
with possible inclusion of printing process.

Tools can be picked up and applied fairly easily when you have the
conceptual knowledge behind you.

On 8/26/05, Hiking Nut <carolinahikingnut -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>        I'm as new as you can get in this field (I'm starting a TW
> certificate program this fall, but I do have 17 years under my belt as
> a technician in the telecom field). I'd like to know if anyone could
> recommend 2-3 software apps that I should focus on learning before I
> applying for work in this field? I've looked through the archives and
> seen quite a few mentioned (RoboHelp, FrameMaker, DocToHelp) but I'd
> like to know which would be most beneficial to learn starting out.

-- 
Bill Swallow
42.8162,-73.7736

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