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Re: Wanting to know more about Information Mapping
Subject:Re: Wanting to know more about Information Mapping From:"Wilcox, John (WWC, Contractor)" <wilcoxj -at- WDNI -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 23 Jan 1998 21:48:00 -0800
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From: Roth, Lesley, Ms., SAM-GATQ
I am a co-op in a software dev. environment. I do not have a software
or tech background and I am trying to learn as much as I can...as fast
as
I can...so that I may understand my co-workers. A big topic here is
Information Mapping.
---------------------------
Search the techwr-l archives and you'll find at least one thread on this
subject. We discussed this in late April/early May 1997. Basically,
what I've found is that some people like it and a lot of people hate it.
I'm in the latter group. It's been adopted here as a standard for memos
and such, but I think it's a bain to a tech writer. It's not that the
IM theory is bad -- most of us probably use most of it already; it's the
way it's implemented (IMO). When you use the IM Word template, you end
up with ALL your text in tables (yuck) and page-width rules after every
topic -- a topic being being defined by a heading. So you often have 4
or 5 rules on a page (yuck!). And because everything's in table's,
editing is even more cumbersome than it normally is in Word.
The bottom line question I have is: If IM's style is so great, why have
I never seen a manual written in it?
If you don't find IM in the archives, let me know and I'll forward the
messages I saved.
Regards,
John Wilcox, Documentation Specialist
Timberlands Information Services, Application Delivery Group
Weyerhaeuser, WWC 2E2, Box 2999
Tacoma, WA 98477-2999 USA
253-924-7972 mailto:wilcoxj -at- wdni -dot- com
(I don't speak for Weyerhaeuser, and they return the favor.)
