Content Theory: Sheep and Chaos — MK Anderson. Keith Anderson writes about the need for technical communicators to focus on user needs and the user experience as their starting point. Does DITA fulfill this focus? Not in the eyes of the user. Users want better search and social networking.

Palimpsest: Flare 5 DITA feature review Part 1: Overview and map files. I really enjoyed this thorough testing and analysis of Flare 5′s integration of DITA. It’s a huge new feature with forward-looking possibilities (namely webhelp output from DITA). Sarah O’Keefe does a nice job looking at all details, quirks, and other issues.

In a career development workshop at the TransAlpine Conference in Vienna, Ellis Pratt, one of the founders of Cherryleaf, argued that technical communicators may eventually become extinct if they keep using the same methods and formats to deliver information. Although there will always be a need for people to explain technical material non-technical people, Ellis said, others may be doing it instead, through the formats … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 7 min. In this podcast, Mike Hamilton of Madcap Software talks about their phased approach to handling DITA with Flare. In Phase I, you’ll have the ability to import DITA topics and export to webhelp and other targets. In this sense, Flare functions as a transform engine. … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 11 min. In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 43 min. In this podcast, I talk with Ricardo Amigo, a translator and podcaster in Mexico City and Costa Rica, about the field of technical writing. This podcast is more of a reverse interview. Instead of me asking the questions, Ricardo interviews me. The general topic is … more »

This article is a guest post by Daniel Ng. Daniel is part of a small team with an in-house translator. They translate their own English Flare help projects to Simplified Chinese with Madcap Lingo and have been using Madcap Lingo since version 1. Madcap Lingo is Madcap’s offering in the XML-based translation authoring solution space. As a translation memory system, Madcap Lingo helps translators speed up and simplify the translation … more »

The Rise of Topic-Based Video in Task-Based Documentation: Is It Time for DITA and Video? The Content Wrangler.

Giovanni from Italy asks the following about SharePoint: I am assisting a colleague with a complete overhaul of an existing Help system. It is in RoboHelp, but has legacy topics that have to be maintained in Word. The Help is for call center and business office employees regarding the proprietary, in-house computer program. We recently got SharePoint, and I would like to know your thoughts … more »

The DITA-to-WordPress importer tool allows you to import the XHTML output from the DITA Open Toolkit as pages into WordPress. This  importer (created by Mike Little, a brilliant developer who had a hand in creating WordPress itself) is available for download here, along with a sample XHTML output. The DITA-to-WordPress tool fills a major gap with the existing DITA outputs. Currently, the DITA Open Toolkit … more »

Scriptorium has created a brief survey about structured authoring. The purpose of the survey is to gather “input from everyone: those who have implemented structured authoring, are planning to implement it, or have decided against it.” The survey only took me about three minutes to complete. When the results are published, each participant receives a free copy (valued at $200). Take the survey here. You … more »

DITA Topics Tutorial (a Captivate demo)

For a blog about the latest trends in technical communication, I’ve been conspicuously silent about DITA, the XML standard for technical documentation that is rapidly becoming the norm in the industry. Tonight I realized that I need to examine more closely where I stand on DITA. Several events prompted this. At my work we have a small authoring group that is tool independent. I use … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 35 min. ComponentOne recently released Doc-To-Help 2009, which introduces a complete redesign of their user interface. In this podcast, I talk with Nicky Bleiel, who works for ComponentOne, in depth about Doc-To-Help. Nicky has been a technical communicator for fourteen years and is now a director at … more »

Today should have been a day of great excitement, almost like a coronation. Having struggled with a 175 page user manual for several months, I finally finished a first draft. Today I met with the client, alongside the senior project manager, the project manager, and a few others to present the sacred document, with the words “Reference Manual” on the front. I say it should … more »