Re: focus so deeply on DTP.

["John P. Brinegar" <johnbri -at- PRIMENET -dot- COM>]

Kris, KJOlberg -at- AOL -dot- COM, wrote:

>I long for the days when I can give my copy to DTP so they can perform their
>magic on it. As it is now, I am forced to spend my time worrying about fonts,
>point sizes, white space, rather than on the content.

I sure don't. That is, I don't every want to throw my work across the wall
to the production people. I want to be involved in the whole process. Two
factors cause me to be concerned about and to contribute to the whole
process:

(1) Readers are increasinly more visually oriented and less textually
oriented. My work today has much lest text these days than it did with I
took up tech writing 45 years ago. It has far more illustrations, tables,
and charts. The size and positioning of these elements are important to me.

(2) Most of my work is presented in a computer screen. When it is printed
on paper, it usually is also available online, in a different form than on
paper. Therefore, during the earliest stages of the development process, I
begin to visualize how the work will appear to the user. I believe this
helps me to communicate more effectively. It would be much easier (and
faster) just to do a textual brain dump, but, in my opinion, the results
would not be as effective.

-----------------------------------
John P. Brinegar, http://www.netzone.com/~jbrinega/
Consulting and development
-Performance support systems
-Technical communications

Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A.
(602) 278-7398
johnbri -at- primenet -dot- com