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Google Books, yes; Google Scholar, no. Very nice. Thank you again, Robert.
Yes, I knew somebody was going to tweak me about that Google reference. :) I had even written a pre-emptive comment into my original response, then took it out because the note was already too weighty. But I was basically going to say that Google would have helped me find John M. Carroll's publications page that you posted in your original response, if I'd bothered to look!
So make it clear: I'm in no way maligning Google as a research tool, and in fact obviously it's a very powerful one. I've made fantastic use of Google Books, and I especially like the fact that you can find full, scanned versions (in PDF) of old books for which the copyright has gone into the public domain. That's an incredible research source. Now I'll make use of Google Scholar.
Thanks again.
Oh, and I got the response from Laura Lemay. I dispute the notion that these are old ideas that are well entrenched in the tech writing community. I've been in the field for 25 years, and I work with a number of people who have just as many years in as I do, and I'm amazed at how few of my colleagues know of minimalism or use its principles. And if indeed it's so entrenched, then why is the one workshop on it so very popular these days? According to the group that presents it, it's their most popular workshop of all. That's the one I was talking about as being reviewed on Techwr-l back in late 2002.
Anyway... back to work or this day will be minimally productive.
Thanks again, Robert. You're a fantastic source of help, and I really appreciate it.
Best wishes,
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+steve -dot- janoff2=teradata -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+steve -dot- janoff2=teradata -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:09 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Minimalism since 2000
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Janoff, Steve<Steve -dot- Janoff2 -at- teradata -dot- com> wrote:
>
> ... search through Google -- notwithstanding Google's value, that responder presented links to informal sources that were not necessarily reliable. It's much more useful in this case, I believe, to investigate the formal published research -- articles and books. Although that can sometimes be suspect, maybe with the author having an agenda, the informal sources tend to be "repurposing" of the original ideas presented back in the 80's and 90's -- no pushing the boundaries.) ...
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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