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Subject:Re: Please describe value of Information Mapping From:"Susan W Gallagher" <susanwg -at- gmail -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Mon, 7 Apr 2008 15:52:09 -0700
Ned,
The Minimalist Documentation movement began with John M. Carroll's _The
Nurnberg Funnel_ and is further discussed and explained in _Minimalism
Beyond the Nurnberg Funnel_ edited by Carroll and featuring chapters by
Joann Hackos and Ginny Redish. _Minimalism Beyond ..._ is the book to read
to learn about minimalism in practice.
Some of the practices that Carroll introduced are to document only a single
way to perform a task, encourage exploration, support recovery, ...Many of
Carroll's points have become conventional wisdom/common sense over the
years.
Much of Carroll's early work centered around tutorials for programmers
learning Smalltalk, and a lot of what he said in _The Nurnberg Funnel_ makes
more sense in the training arena than in a user guide. But the work that's
been done since then (by Carroll and others) has taken the original
Minimalist principles and adapted them to user guides and the like.
HTH
-Sue Gallagher
On 4/6/08, Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Bob Doyle wrote:
>
>
> > The whole MInimalism movement in the 1990's showed that the average
> > technical document was just not being read or used.
>
> Hi Bob, I've enjoyed your perspective and comments about DITA. I'd like
> to understand about Minimalism in the 1990s. I'm not clear whether it
> refers to a consumer-initiated movement toward intuitive products where
> the documentation didn't matter to them, or perhaps something that came
> about with the innovation lust and the quest for new competitve
> advantages in the speculative dotcoms business era.
>
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