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.
That line by van Herwijnen makes me see red. But it's typical of this peculiar
and extremely arrogant top-down approach by SGML's designers.
Tech writers and writers in general do NOT by nature create badly looking
documents. In fact, in most shops, the tech writers are the ones creating the
competent- to good-looking documents and templates.
I work with an SGML system here are EJV Partners that I'm trying to get ditched.
The SGML coding interferes with the intellectual work by making you focus again
and again on the process of entering text--whenever you make a coding mistake,
in other words, it beeps at you and interrupts your thought processes over and
over and over...
One of the SGML ideas--having a standard text exchange method--is laudable. (But
why not use Postscript? Why not use a program like Interleaf's WorldView or
Framemaker 4 that accepts text in dozens of formats and exports in same?) But
until SGML coding is built into all word-processors--until tech writers wrest
the standards-making process away from these bizarre SGML power trippers!--I
say "Stay away. It'll add a year or more to your project and the result won't
be as good as if you used a standard word-processing tool."
