Re: getting experience with expensive tools

[Janet Swisher <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 3:36 PM, Tom Johnson <tomjohnson1492 -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> This topic is actually a question someone asked me at my last STC meeting. A
> 38-year old tech support engineer looking to break into tech writing wanted
> to know how he could learn all of these tools -- Photoshop, InDesign, Flare,
> Captivate, etc -- if he had no money for them. He wondered what I thought
> about open source options. For example, Open Office instead of Word. Gimp
> instead of Photoshop.
>
> I told him that he might be wasting his time learning tools that companies
> aren't using. It takes a lot of time (usually) to become proficient in a
> specific tool. I guess learning MS Publisher is better than nothing, but if
> I were hiring and looking for someone with InDesign expertise, I'd skip over
> the Publisher background. As a prospective employee, you don't want to put
> in a lot of time learning tools that in the end aren't valued by the very
> companies you're seeking to be employed by. Still, open source tools are
> better than none at all. And it's probably better than racking up $3k+ of
> debt to buy an officially licensed version of something you may or may not
> truly need.

The principles behind the software are generally the same, independent
of the application. So, you can learn about raster image editing using
GIMP as well as with PhotoShop. For example, the FLOSS Manuals project
recently helped to convert the book "Digital Foundations"
(http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations) to use open source
design tools. I'd love to find tech writing texts where the authors
would be open to the book being "FLOSSified".

So, if we're talking about a career-changer who needs to learn tech
writing principles of things like templates and styles, they can learn
that using OpenOffice.org. Once they've mastered those concepts, they
can pick up how to apply them in FrameMaker using a 30-day trial.

BTW, Omni Systems offers Mif2Go for free to students and
un/underemployed tech writers:
http://www.omsys.com/dcl/offer.htm

-- 
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