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Subject:Re: State of the Technical Writing Field From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"Bill Swallow" <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:34:24 -0800
The great granddaddy of structured, modular documentation was (probably still
is) DoD manuals. There are probably other people here besides me who can
remember receiving five pound update packages to massive ring-bindered tomes and
spending many fun hours replacing dozens of single-sheet sections with catchy
names like "31.567.1121B." I remember our exceitement when the company I was
working for at the time got one of the first Xerox DocuTech Production Publisher
systems and salivating at the thought of being able to load all these subdocs
into a data storage system (by scanning the camera-ready masters!!!) and then
generate new and revised documents at will. And at the time I wasn't even a
technical writer yet; I was still an engineer.
I was thinking more along the lines of automated publishing, authoring
in a structured environment, using taxonomies to manage stored
information, yadda yadda yadda.
Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com
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