Re: Styles for User Guides

[Kevin McLauchlan <KMcLauchlan -at- CHRYSALIS-ITS -dot- COM>]

About who owns what...
Let's not go off the deep end, please.

While I agree that Sharon should probably keep herself
at obvious arm's length from her particular student
(bless his mercenary little heart  :-), I think in general
you'd want to define what you mean by "template" before
you go putting them on pedestals behind force fields.

First, DID the client pay for a template, or did they
pay for some documents, done in a style with which
they were (corporately) comfortable?

Second, what is the legal definition of a template,
such that it can be distinguished from all others?

Unless I'm way off base, here, a template is a layout
plus the "mechanical" contrivances necessary to
implement that layout with a particular tool (or family of tools).

Now, it may seem, at first glance, that there is an
infinite number of unique combinations of text and
graphic elements that can be applied to a piece of
paper (somebody else can worry about web and CD,
if this argument doesn't seem to carry over), but I
suggest that we can make use of only a tiny subset.

Those of us who are writing in most "western" languages
are pretty well constrained by the way in which those
languages are read -- top left corner to bottom right
corner.  Further, little inconveniences like bindings
rather force us away from particular edges of each
sheet. [Relatively] common aesthetic considerations
then drive us to impose certain consistent approaches
to proportion and balance between white space and text.

Throw in some addtional, basic readability constraints,
along with the need to place and use illustrations, and
we've come down to a rather confined subset of all the
possible ways you could slap text and graphics onto
blankness.  If you are further confined to a category
like "technical documentation", then the axes of layout
and typographical freedom are finite indeed.

So, the point is that we literally cannot afford to wall off
big design spaces within that limited working field, saying
that those spaces and arrangements are private property.

Not for a minute do I suggest that graphic devices like
logos are not legitimately (perhaps exclusively?) associated
with particular persons or companies. Hell, for the sake
of plain utility, never mind ownership, they should be
considered sacrosanct.  But, their placement and
arrangement should NOT be!

There are only so many places it makes sense to put a
company logo on a page. There are only so many places
it makes sense to put icons and rules and other such
aids to readability.  We may not, as a group, have used
all such placements and combinations yet, but we've used
most of them.

We owe it to ourselves (if not our posterity) to NOT enshrine
the best (?) of these -- alone or in combination -- as
untouchable property.  If we start tying up page layouts
and pleasing subsets of page layouts,
how long will it be before companies are suing other
companies and writers for "infringement" even though
the offending company and writer never even MET one
of the sacred documents, with the sacred layout?  The
poor writer might have simply used good basic design
sense (or rules) when laying out his document -- and
creating the template that enforced that layout.

Picture, just a few years from now, quoting your usual
times and costs plus fudge factor... and then tacking on
another hundred hours for the equivalent of a "patent
search" when you quote a job to a little company that
can't yet afford to hire a full-time writer.

When you design a nice layout, following whatever
requirements your customer wishes to impose, and
build a document template in your favorite word processor
or dtp program, the customer is paying for your
expertise, your time, and for having FIRST use of that
particular scheme.

We simply can't let it happen that they get to lock up
(for how many years?) the proportions and spacing
and esthetic arrangement of basic elements on a page.
Beyond that, there are only so many ways to produce
a particular arrangement of graphic and typographical
elements, in a given program. Furthermore, of those
ways, only one or two are reasonable, given the way
the software works.  As an industry, and as practitioners,
we can't afford to tie up either (layout or method).

If I want to take the layout I used last year for company
XYZ's set of user manuals, and use it again, with only
the logo changed for company ZYX... what shouldn't I?

Perhaps I could mention to ZYX that the layout is very
similar to that of XYZ, in case they prefer to pay
more for redesign time...

Finally, if I see your proudest achievement in the
local techy library, or heading up the winners of
the latest STC design challenge... I promise to steal
it shamelessly.  Furthermore, if you and I are fairly
close in our ability with FrameMaker, you can bet
that the IMPLEMENTATION (i.e. the template) that
I produce will be VERY close to what you used,
simply because, while there may be several ways
to make a thing happen in a program, there are
certain better, easier, more likely ways to achieve
a given goal.

Don't sulk about it. Don't go off on a rant to your
lawyer (or try to get your customer to do it for you).
You'll be shooting yourself in the foot as much as
you'll be punishing me.

Regards,


Kevin McLauchlan
kmclauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com    (aka  kevinmcl -at- netrover -dot- com)
Journeyman techy writer, duffer skydiver, full-time unrepentent chocoholic

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sharon Burton-Hardin [SMTP:sharonburton -at- EMAIL -dot- MSN -dot- COM]
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 1999 10:49 AM
> Subject:      Re: Styles for User Guides
>
> While it may be perfectly legal to re-use a template that a client paid
> you
> to create, I think it is unethical as all get out. And may be theft of
> intellectual property. The client paid for the template.
>
> For example, I taught Frame last month for 5 weeks. In one of those
> classes,
> a student who works in the aerospace industry said that there is a large
> market for templates in his industry. He would be happy to bring me the
> templates they use at R**. Then I could make a change or 2 and then we
> could
> sell them to other aerospace companies. I nearly had a nervous breakdown
> right there. My students' mouths all fell open.
>
> I explained calmly that the templates belonged to the company and that
> would
> be stealing. No, no, he assured me, they use the templates all the time.
> There was nothing wrong with it. I kept trying to get across that these
> were
> at least the intellectual property of R** and that I couldn't do that. It
> was unethical as all hell, at least.
>
> I thought about it all week and talked to friends in and out of the
> business. Everyone agreed that it could fall into theft of intellectual
> property. So if he brought me the templates the next week, I was going to
> have to refuse to touch the disk and make sure that I had witnesses. I was
> very nervous about it but he dropped the discussion the following week.
>
> sharon
>
> Sharon Burton-Hardin
> President of the Inland Empire chapter of the STC
> www.iestc.org
> Anthrobytes Consulting
> Home of RoboNEWS(tm), the unofficial RoboHELP newsletter
> www.anthrobytes.com
> Check out www.WinHelp.net!
> See www.sharonburton.com!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CASSIN Gilles <GCassin -at- MEGA -dot- COM>
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU <TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>
> Date: Friday, 02 April, 1999 6:46 AM
> Subject: Re: Styles for User Guides
>
>
> |quote from Jane Bergen: I would think you'd be safe to use any existing
> |template, including the one you created for a previous company....with
> |*some* changes.
> |Answering to Moore, Tracey:
> |>I was curious about copyrights. If the client copyrights >the manual,
> |do they own the style as well?
> |They can copyright the thing as a whole, the text, a drawing by itself,
> |but certainly not the template. Even if they created the font (which has
> |a copyright).
> |BTW, could you send me personnally an example of such copyrightable
> |template, to make my eyes go into raptures in front of such beauties :-,
> |
> |Gilles CASSIN
> |mailto:gcassin -at- mega -dot- com
> |+33 1 42 75 40 22
> |Typos help me avoid these hoards of job proposals that litter my
> |mailbox.
> |My opinions are mine, and neither you nor my company can take credit for
> |them. YOU can cite them if you think they were of use.
> |
> |
> |From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000
> ==
> |
> |

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=