Two powerful trends in tech comm seem to be moving in different directions: social media and structured authoring. I have used a wiki as my primary format for documentation for the past year and a half. I tried to corral a group of volunteer technical writers to edit and update the wiki, because I embraced the idea that collective intelligence beats the individual thinker in … more »

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted about my team’s search for an enterprise authoring strategy. So far, we’re just as split as ever about the problem. It seems that you can go four separate routes: DITA, HAT, Web, or Wiki. Here are some of the paths and difficulties we’re encountering. DITA DITA has traction as a new standard format for help authoring, … more »

With my recent reflections on long versus short text, a comment by Michael O’neil made me wonder whether the “reading to do” mode equated with DITA’s task type, and whether the “reading to learn” mode equated to DITA’s concept type. In researching this, I stumbled across a goldmine of an article on the History of DITA. The article (mostly by Bob Doyle) traces the evolution … more »

Sarah O’Keefe at Scriptorium is running a survey on structured authoring. You can take the survey here. Sarah defines authoring as “a publishing workflow that lets you define and automatically enforce consistent organization of information.” Typical structured authoring models include DITA, DocBook, S1000D, ATA, and SPL. Flare, Robohelp, wikis, and other help authoring tools and platforms that do not enforce a structure aren’t typically considered … more »

In this video, I talk with Richard Hamilton, founder of XML Press, an imprint focused on technical communication, to share details about the upcoming books he is publishing. Richard also comments on how he identifies topics and trends for the technical communication publishing market.

Sarah O’Keefe at Palimpsest is offering several webinars on DITA and XML. I attended a webinar by Sarah before. It was clear, straightforward, and engaging. I definitely recommend her.

[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 »

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 »

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 »

Web 2.0: The Tipping Point for XML (application/pdf)

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (right-click and select Save Target As to download) Duration: 60 min. In this podcast, Liz Fraley, founder of Single Sourcing Solutions, talks to the Intermountain STC chapter about “Repurposing Content for Multichannel Publishing.” See this flyer for a more detailed description of the presentation. Liz Fraley is the founder of Single Sourcing Solutions. You can read … more »

Darwin Information Typing Architecture DITA reading list | just write click.

Trends in Technical Communication: a review [TechScribe software documentation]. Excellent detail. Wish everyone wrote up their conference experiences like this.

Download MP3 Duration: 15 min. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] XML, a way of tagging and structuring your content, can help solve a number of problems, including storing, mining, reusing, and sharing content. XML helps enable the interoperability of information between systems, allowing you to export and import your content from one application to another. XML is behind much of the collaboration and … more »

Download MP3 Duration: 15 min. [Audio clip: view full post to listen] In this podcast, Sarah O’Keefe talks about XSL, Flash, and live blogging. XSL (extensible stylesheet language) is a programming language that transforms XML content into a specific format, such as HTML. She explains what you can do with XSL, why it’s unique, and how the output is created.