Perspectives on Technical Writing from India

Walk When You Talk

2009-08-19T17:24:00.001-07:00

"Walk When You Talk" is the subject of an ad from !dea Cellular. There's even a Walk n Talk Meter that tells how many calories you could've lost if you walked while you talked on your cellphone:-)

While I am not endorsing !dea Cellular in any way, I will strongly suggest the "Walk When You Talk" concept when communicating with colleagues. So instead of sending an email or talking on the phone to a colleague who is in the same location, just walk down to your colleague's office and talk to him/her. This helps to:

o Get your job done faster,
o Reduce any confusion,
o Know your colleague better, and last but not the least
o Keep you healthy

So go ahead and Walk When You Talk!!

Understand your search engine to design better search metadata

2009-08-12T16:23:00.001-07:00

Somebody commented that one needs an understanding of the strengths and limitations of search engines to design better search metadata and that you might even need to add search metadata to work around the limitations of search engines.
For example, if your search engine does not display the results for some specific keywords that you expect users to search for, you will need to add such keywords as metadata.

DITA Quick Start

2009-08-08T20:07:00.000-07:00

Gone through articles and presentations on the web and got a half-baked understanding of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)?

Refer to my DITA Quick Start presentation for the 2007 STC India Conference to learn to evaluate, plan and start implementing DITA.

In this presentation, you will learn about the following:

Structured authoring and XML
Key DITA concepts: topics, maps, specialization
DITA architecture and content model
Authoring in topics
Organizing content using DITA maps
Creating relationship tables
Conditional text and reuse in DITA
Metadata support in DITA
DITA tools, standards and processes
Publishing with the DITA Open Toolkit

Am I a Doctor?

2009-08-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

A few days back I got a frantic call late in the evening. Someone in the family was behaving as if he has lost his mind after being administered some eye drops at a hospital. And the call was to ask me to check out the documentation for the eye drops to confirm if it caused such side effects.

Websites like http://www.drugs.com give detailed information about medicines and their side effects. While these websites are never a substitute for advice from a doctor, I found them very useful on several occasions.

Getting Good at Life!!

2009-08-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

You must have watched videos demonstrating the use of software products.

If you are wondering whether videos are available to help with the things you want to do in your day-to-day life such as using chop sticks, playing your keyboard, and zillions of other stuff, check out http://www.videojug.com.

Going Ga Ga Over Microsoft Office Communicator?

2009-08-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

A lot of folks are going ga ga over Microsoft Office Communicator. Office Communicator is basically an instant messaging (IM) software that integrates with Microsoft Outlook and even phone systems to support IM, audio and video conferencing and a host of other productivity, collaboration and communication related features.

Office Communicator is just one more example of Microsoft's unrelenting focus on usability, productivity, and last but not the least, in-depth user documentation and support resources.

And it is one more reason why you must start thinking of applying the same focus to the products that you develop. And for that you need to understand what went wrong and what needs to be done. Here are two resources that can help you with this:

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity gives an insight into team dynamics that create products that "drive us crazy".

Institutionalization of Usability provides a road map to set up a user-centered design process.

Thought for the hour

2009-07-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Now you must be wondering what happened to the Thought for the Day.

Time is precious---so one of my friends who is capable of even coming up with thoughts for the minute is now sharing his thoughts per hour.

Read Thought of the Hour for some interesting and inspirational thoughts. It serves you "A fresh thought every hour. No stale quotations".

The Story of Simplified English and More !!

2009-07-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

One interesting resource I came across while researching on simplified/controlled english is the 112 page Simplified English: The New Language for International Business booklet published by Tedopres International. Do request for your copy of the booklet at http://www.simplifiedenglish.net.

Their Technical Illustrations: New Efficient Ways to Visualize Your Product booklet is also quite interesting and claims to talk about a concept called simplified illustrations.

Leveraging Indexes as Search Metadata

2009-07-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

You have invested thousands of hours in developing indexes for your printed user manuals that are now posted online in HTML format but still find that the findability of content on your website is not up to expectations. Why not leverage the indexes (that were developed with findability of content as the primary criteria) to improve findability by writing the index information as search metadata in your HTML files?

Metadata Primer

2009-07-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

For a primer on the role of metadata in technical writing, see my Metadata Primer presentation for the 2008 STC India Conference.

Podcasts on Technical Writing

2008-09-23T02:35:00.000-07:00

For a change, listen to podcasts on Technical Writing at Tom Johnson's popular blog:

I'd Rather Be Writing

Secure your WiFi Network

2008-09-23T02:16:00.000-07:00

After the recent incident in Mumbai involving the misuse of an unsecured WiFi network, you might want to read the following article and secure your WiFi network:

How to Secure a Wireless LAN (WLAN)

My article on Indus: IA Standards for Tech Doc

2006-01-08T22:40:00.000-08:00

My article on Information Architecture Standards for Technical Documentation.

Published in STC India's Indus Newsletter.

Another XML standard for Technical Documentation: OASIS DITA

2005-02-27T06:32:00.000-08:00

The OASIS Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a XML based architecture developed by IBM for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways.

For more information on DITA, see http://xml.coverpages.org/dita.html

Real Life: XML Implementation for Technical Documentation at Juniper Networks

2005-02-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

Want to know the inside story of XML implementation for technical documentation at Juniper Networks.

See the presentations at http://single-sourcing.com/events/index.php?s=juniper.

Another interesting article on Content Reuse

2005-02-25T05:13:00.000-08:00

See Content Reuse in Practice by James Robertson of Step Two Designs at http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_contentreuse/index.html

Understanding Content Reuse

2005-02-24T02:14:00.000-08:00

I have read several of articles on content reuse. But one article that stands out and explains content reuse in the best possible way is the Fundamental Concepts of Reuse chapter from Ann Rockley's book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy. See http://www.rockley.com/articles/MEC_Chapter_2.pdf

Visit http://www.rockley.com/ for more interesting white papers, articles and webinar archives on content management and related topics.

FrameMaker Tip: Testing Hypertext Marker Commands

2005-02-24T00:22:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered if there is a way to test the hypertext marker commands in your Adobe FrameMaker book.

Use the Esc,v,h command in the active FrameMaker document or select the files you want to test (in the FrameMaker book window) and press Esc,v,h

FrameMaker reports errors for duplicate newlink markers, gotolink markers with no corresponding newlink marker, incorrect syntax used in hypertext markers, and so on.

Note: Do not run this command if you have opened a FrameMaker book over a mapped network drive as it will take a long time to complete. I found this command to execute faster if you run it on the machine on which FrameMaker files are stored, and really fast if you have all the files in the book opened.

Important: Do not run this command on the Table of Contents file as FrameMaker will try to validate every link in the Table of Contents.

Your search for a good XML editor ends here

2005-02-23T22:47:00.000-08:00

Wanna learn XML.

You are not the first to spend hours browsing the web to find a good XML editor for learning purposes.

Altova now provides you XMLSpy® 2005 Home Edition, a FREE entry level XML development tool for getting started with XML technologies. Ideal for hobbyists, entry-level developers, and students.

Go to http://www.altova.com/

Productivity Tip: Learn FrameMaker Keyboard Shortcuts

2005-02-23T22:42:00.000-08:00

As Technical Writers we use FrameMaker extensively. It will be a good investment to learn the keyboard shortcuts in FrameMaker.

Make yourself more productive...

See the Keyboard Command Guide for FrameMaker at http://www.microtype.com/resources/fmkbdcmd.pdf

Productivity Tip: Faster screen captures in FrameMaker using SnagIt FrameMaker Plugin

2005-02-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

Techsmith SnagIt, an award winning screen capture utility provides a plugin for Adobe FrameMaker versions 6 and 7.

You can now start Snagit within FrameMaker to capture and edit images. Once you save the image in SnagIt, the image is automatically inserted into your FrameMaker document.

Productivity Tip: Go for the Firefox Browser

2005-02-23T04:16:00.000-08:00

Why should I be recommending the Firefox browser on this blog?
I have been using Firefox for the last few months and find it much faster to work with than Internet Explorer. Go for it.

Not to be left behind, Microsoft announces Internet Explorer 7 beta release this summer. See http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/15/373104.aspx

Technical Writing Newsletters in India

2005-02-21T04:35:00.000-08:00

Indus, STC India's award-winning bimonthly publication at http://www.stc-india.org/indus.htm

TechCraft, a newsletter from the technical_writers_india Yahoo!! Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/technical_writers_india/files/TechCraft/

Full day tutorial: Effective Prototyping

2005-02-21T02:12:00.000-08:00

Human Factors International does another first in India by announcing a full day tutorial on Effective Prototyping: Cheap and Fast Tools for Creating Product Visualizations.

For more information, see https://www.humanfactors.com/training/registration3/pttutorial.asp

Usability Training from Human Factors International, Mumbai

2005-01-11T03:48:00.000-08:00

Human Factors International announces four usability training programs starting February 22, 2005.

For more information, see http://www.humanfactors.com/training/scheduleindia.asp

Information Mapping Training in India

2004-12-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

TecDoc Limited is the authorised training provider for Information Mapping in India. I had attended their program two years back and found it very useful.

Implementing information mapping can be quite a challenge and requires intensive training for writers. A formal training on information mapping also helps writers to quickly get adjusted to structured writing environments.

Gold Mine for Technical Writers

2004-12-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

The session materials of past STC International Conferences are a veritable gold mine of knowledge for technical writers.

Checkout the STC International Conference Session Materials website at http://www.stc.org/conference_sessionmaterials.asp.

The Polar Bear Book (Online)

2004-12-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

Checkout the online version of the IA Bible: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville at http://books.deathace.net/wdesign/infoarch/index.htm.

Interesting Web Site and UI Design Tools

2004-12-02T02:25:00.000-08:00

The Group for User Interface Research at the University of California at Berkely offers some interesting web site and UI design tools.
Checkout their projects website for more information.

India's Contribution to Information Architecture

2004-12-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

Read Ranganathan for IAs.

Source: Boxes and Arrows, the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape.

Featuring India's Usability Pioneers - Pradeep Henry

2004-12-02T01:32:00.000-08:00

Meet Pradeep Henry, the founder/head of India's first usability lab at Cognizant Technology Solutions, Chennai, India.
To know more about Pradeep, his publications and his book User-Centered Information Design for Improved Software Usability, see www.tech-bridge.com.

Welcome to Perspectives on Technical Writing from India Blog

2004-12-02T01:23:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Welcome to the Perspectives on Technical Writing from India Blog. This blog will track and discuss technical writing and related areas like usability, information architecture, content management, and authoring tools.

Please feel free to contribute to this blog.

Thanks
Selvakumar