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Subject:Re: Please describe value of Information Mapping From:Yves Jeaurond <jingting -at- rogers -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:36:55 -0400 (EDT)
As much as my enthusiasm for minimalism may match Sue's,
I have to disagree that that 'common wisdom' came only after
Carroll started the movement. Minimalist principles are a synopsis,
a good re-exposition and critique of expository styles---not all---
that have been around for centuries. One can see the same
worries as Carroll's in Euclid, other Greek geometers, then through
many Latin treatises, including Spinoza, Newton and so on.
Recent efforts can be found in textbooks like Knuth's works on algorithms.
Of course, not every TW from the past and ancient times wrote
minimally. Right at the beginning of the _Poetics_ Aristotle states
that the only thing common to Empedocles (a TW) and Homer is
versification. Now versification is a style very far removed
from minimalism; perhaps its very opposite. Pope's _Essay on Man_
is a good example of expository literature
Anyhoo, the "more geometrico" style and other minimalist efforts
(some dictionaries are another good example) were floating around
before Carroll---the French Larousse, and other writing efforts inspired
by positivism come to mind. It is good that Carroll gave it a new name,
stated its usefulness for technical literature and got the backing of Hackos.
I enjoyed _Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel_ just as much as other
minimalist-like works, such as Williams, _The Non-Designer's Design Book_,
Tufte's beautiful books. Minimalism is like a born-again "more geometrico". :-)
As soon as writing requires conciseness, precision, mid-topic recaps,
definitions, axioms, warnings, comments and a modular topical structure
(all found in Euclid's _Elements of Geometry_) one gets a minimalist text.
Kudos to Carrol for bringing its ideas and principles to a wider audience
----an audience that it seems hadn't bothered much to read the corpus
of works that made minimalism possible; a corpus that bears witness
that minimalism is much less original than some believe.
Regards,
YJ
Susan W Gallagher <susanwg -at- gmail -dot- com> a écrit :
Ned,
The Minimalist Documentation movement began with John M. Carroll's _The
Nurnberg Funnel_ and is further discussed and explained in _Minimalism
Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel_ edited by Carroll and featuring chapters by
Joann Hackos and Ginny Redish. _Minimalism Beyond ..._ is the book to read
to learn about minimalism in practice.
Some of the practices that Carroll introduced are to document only a single
way to perform a task, encourage exploration, support recovery, ...Many of
Carroll's points have become conventional wisdom/common sense over the
years.
Much of Carroll's early work centered around tutorials for programmers
learning Smalltalk, and a lot of what he said in _The Nurnberg Funnel_ makes
more sense in the training arena than in a user guide. But the work that's
been done since then (by Carroll and others) has taken the original
Minimalist principles and adapted them to user guides and the like.
HTH
-Sue Gallagher
On 4/6/08, Ned Bedinger wrote:
>
> Bob Doyle wrote:
>
>
> > The whole MInimalism movement in the 1990's showed that the average
> > technical document was just not being read or used.
>
> Hi Bob, I've enjoyed your perspective and comments about DITA. I'd like
> to understand about Minimalism in the 1990s. I'm not clear whether it
> refers to a consumer-initiated movement toward intuitive products where
> the documentation didn't matter to them, or perhaps something that came
> about with the innovation lust and the quest for new competitve
> advantages in the speculative dotcoms business era.
>
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