Re: Not even Newbe, Wantabe - addenda (1)

[Peter Collins <peter -dot- collins -at- BIGFOOT -dot- COM>]

Dick Margulis wrote:" HCI - I haven't the foggiest. Anyone?"

Guilty! I have put this mnemonic in several replies to those seeking
contacts for technical writing opportunities down Australia way. But
in my own defense, I believe have always indicated, explicitly or by
the context, that it is a company name.

HCI is a Sydney, Australia, management consulting and communication
services company which includes technical writing and editing among
its services. Web http://www.hci.com.au, email info -at- hci -dot- com -dot- au -dot-  I am
registered with HCI as a contract writer and they find me contracts
among their clients in what I guess is the usual way.

I believe the letters HCI stand for "Hard Copy Interactive" which may
be a humourous reference to:

SSD

Single Source Documents, also known as DPD (Dual Purpose Documents) -
generally, computerised documents that can be rendered into more than
one output format or viewing context from the single source or input
file without requiring any further changes to be made to file
contents.

The claimed benefits of SSD include ease of update maintenance as
there is only ever one latest version of the document. The claimed
disadvantages include the inability to exploit all the extensions
"that will enable Web pages to do even more wonderful things than they
do now" with, say, XML (q.v.).

Output formats include 'hard copy' (computer printed or offset printed
onto paper), WinHelp (q.v.) whether structured as a browsable document
(q.v.) or as context help (q.v.), PDF (q.v.), HTML (q.v.) and
doubtless others. A variety of tools are available to do this. The
simplest and perhaps most widely distributed example would probably be
Microsoft Word in Office97, which will allow you to print the document
or 'Save As' HTML to view as a web page.

q.v.

quod vide (Latin), 'which see'

Winhelp

Microsoft help file format, usually with extension '.hlp'. A compiled
browsable document format, which m this case means that the resulting
hlp file is not in ASCII (American Standard Code Interchange Interface
(perhaps)) with tags (see </RANT>) and thus can generally only be
viewed with the matching Microsoft Winhelp program.

Context help

A Winhelp document explicitly for users of a given computer
application so that at any point in their use of the application they
can automatically have displayed the particular documentation of that
point, or documentation about the correction of any error they may
have made in that use, as the case may be. The documentation and the
computer application must both be designed to interact in this way.

Browsable document

one that is compiled or includes markup tags, in a specific format,
for example HLP, PDF, HTML, XML, etc., so that it will have the
desired appearance when displayed by a browser program such as Winhelp
(for HLP), Acrobat (for PDF) or Netscape (for HTML), or other.

Addenda

(Latin) pl. (plural) of  Addendum - A thing to be added.

Supra

(Latin), 'above'

Actually, I doubt we need to explain anything that can be found in the
standard non-computing, english language literature or dictionaries.

Enough fun for one night!
========================================================
Peter Collins, VIVID Management Pty Ltd,
26 Bradleys Head Road, MOSMAN 2088, Australia
+61 2 9968 3308, fax +61 2 9968 3026, mobile +61 (0)18 419 571
Management Consultants and Technical Writers
email: peter -dot- collins -at- bigfoot -dot- com                ICQ#: 10981283
web pages: http://www.angelfire.com/pe/pcollins/
========================================================

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