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Subject:Re: Latex and indexes? From:Stephen Forrest <techwriter -at- IBM -dot- NET> Date:Sun, 27 Jul 1997 16:20:07 GMT
At 03:05 PM 7/25/97 -0400, Matt Long wrote:
>I sent a few messages out to various software companies this week to try
>and churn up some contract work - - (snip!) - -
>
>Now that I am getting responses, I am freaking out a little bit. I don't
>know if I should try to take on tasks that are not necessarily in my
>expertise. The following is the actual text I receive back from one of
>these companies:
>
>> We are currently updating a significant portion of our documentation.
>> Have you worked with Latex before? We are converting all of our stuff
>> to FrameMaker and we have one large Latex document to deal with.
>>
>> Also, do you build indexes, by which I am primarily referring to the
>> act of identifying the topics and keywords and not simply the
>> mechanics of tagging them in a given word-processor program.
>
>I have never heard of Latex - - (snip!) - -
>I have done some indexing for a manual that is less than 200 pages,
>but depending on what he is talking about, this maybe more than I can
>handle. Indexers... what do you think?
Indexing is definitely a separate skill, but I don't think you necessarily
need special training to do it unless the requirements are extraordinarily
tight. The main thing is to be able to figure out everything a user is
likely to look up, and what they expect to find when they do.
>p.s. I just had a thought... what if the guy who sent me this message is
>on this list? Hmmmmmmmm?
He'll be impressed with your resourcefulness.
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