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A few years ago, I was hired as a contractor (lawyer/tech writer) to help
draft new policies and update existing ones. The policies used an
information mapping style Word template, although none of us was trained
in info mapping.
While the organization of the info was practical, I found the documents
difficult to update with new material because of the block format. I
therefore came the conclsion that info mapping was more suited to static
documents than living ones. I'm curious as to whether my conclusion was
accurate or whether we were just missing some crucial point about info
mapping.
BTW: As a former Interleaf employee, I'm enjoying these references to
Interleaf.
Lynn
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lchesler=auspicecorp -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lchesler=auspicecorp -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of cupton -at- syclone -dot- net
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 10:21 AM
To: Tim Mantyla
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com; Pinkham, Jim
Subject: RE: Please describe value of Information Mapping
I took the training over twenty years ago, and consider it the most
important training I have received in my long tech writing career. My
whole writing team took the class, and half of them never used it. None of
us used the software - it was just a layout software that was pretty
useless. We had our own templates (Interleaf).
One other writer and I were able to reduce our HUGE manuals (>1,000 pages)
to 1/3 the size by shutting ourselves in a conference room with lots of
sticky notes and using the information classification techniques of info
mapping. It was very exciting. I later took a "structured writing" course
for my masters degree that reinforced the principles and taught a very
similar approach.
Some good writers may come to the same place on their own, but it would
have taken a long time for me to do so. Defining and organizing your
content is the whole key.
Carolyn
> Sounds like the results were good. How did you like working with it,
Jim?
>
> Successes, problems, constraints, etc.?
>
> Not sure I'm asking the right questions here, but here's a stab at it:
> Does the software's output require much tweaking and editing, or is it
> usually well organized? How much depends on the organization of the
> original documents? What kind of input in terms of settings,
> parameters and variables, or programming is required?
>
> How effective, readable, usable is the Information Mapping software's
> documentation?
>
> How long did it take you to grasp the principles vs. your self-rated
> (or even as rated by supervisors) speed and ability to assimilate new
> processes, techniques, concepts?
>
> How successful at information mapping would a beginner be on his own,
> after a few days of training, vs. using the software as well?
>
> I'm looking at learning curve time vs. time saved for authors and
> end-users.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tim
>
> "Pinkham, Jim" <Jim -dot- Pinkham -at- voith -dot- com> wrote on 04/04/2008 09:16:43 AM:
>
>> >>>>>>>>> Information Mapping is mainly used in a Word-based
>> >>>>>>>>> authoring
>> environment. Because of its open-source nature, DITA is supported by
>> all the major authoring tools (FrameMaker, XMetal, Arbortext Editor,
>> Syntext Serna,
>> ...) and content management systems.<<<<
>>
>> One point I'd clarify: It seems more accurate to say that Information
>> Mapping software is designed to work with Word. However, the process
>> itself is by no means so narrowly constrained to that particular tool.
>> For example, during my first exposure to Info Mapping, around 1994,
>> we did all of our authoring in Interleaf and used Info Mapping
>> techniques extensively to reduce complex government regulations to
>> accessible, useful information for end users.
>>
>> Jim
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