Re: New writer looking for advice

["William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>]

Fifteen years ago, I went to work for a company that gave me a 20 inch 
monitor. It was huge for the time compared the 15" used most places. I 
thought I was in heaven with the ability to put two full pages side by side 
for comparison and editing when needed and still be able to read them. a few 
years later, they had changed to flat screens and the standard issue was 17 
inch to replace mine that quit. I balked, complained, and pushed back until 
I got a 21 inch.No one could understand the "need" for such a big screen to 
do documentation. After all, I wasn't coding or doing accounting 
spreadsheets. Somehow documentation wasn't as important as those other 
professions. But after summiting that it would be business impacting 
(remember those two words), and could show that the amount of time flipping 
between documents, the need to print instead of view onscreen, and other 
issues would increase costs and slow delivery, they relented. Within 6 
months, everyone had 21 inch flat screens or larger.

Eight years later, I was working at a simulation company. I was working on a 
simulator operator's manual and so got the privilege of having access to a 
video game to end all - a trainer aircraft flight simulator. However, while 
flying it was great, I often needed screen shots that were awkward by having 
to schedule a session, drive 4 miles to the building with the sim, and hope 
that I wasn't overridden by either maintenance issues (downtime) or those 
with higher priority (engineers or managers showing off their project to 
higher managers or customers). The software team decided for much of what I 
was doing, I could use their desktop simulator simulator (yes, really double 
words). This required one full monitor for the flight view and half a 
monitor in the final version, so I had one monitor for my documents, one 
monitor for simulator operator screens, and one monitor for pilot screens.

And I got a joystick to fly it. Naturally, I used to get a lot of looks from 
people passing through who thought I was playing video games on company 
time.

Since then, I have run dual monitors almost all the time. currently, I have 
FrameMaker running the book structure, and two full pages on one 22 inch 
monitor, and all the pods and structured view on the other monitor, along 
with email, browser, IM, and such that is needed.

The days of a 14 inch monochrome monitor in documentation were decades ago. 
Once you end up working this way, you will get almost resentful if you have 
to work on one small or regular sized monitor. I can't imagine using only a 
laptop screen except as a temporary status such as in a meeting.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Lauriston" <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2015 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: New writer looking for advice