I have started work on a content strategy book. The working title is Content Strategy 101: Transform Technical Content into a Business Asset, and I need your help. (more…)
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Content Strategy 101: An experiment in book collaboration
March 21st, 2012 by Sarah O'Keefe
Answer seven (or fewer) questions about ebooks to win $50
February 6th, 2012 by Alan Pringle
Recent news about two new ebook formats has made ebook distribution even more challenging for publishers. To gain some clarity on the market for ebooks about tech comm (and to keep ourselves from repeatedly banging our heads against the wall), we’re asking for your input on ebook editions and devices.
2012 resolution: Explore the frontiers of tech comm with Scriptorium
December 12th, 2011 by Sarah O'Keefe
Our 2012 event schedule is starting to come together. Our guest speaker lineup includes Char James-Tanny, Peter Lubbers, and Sarah Maddox, with more to be announced.
This year, we are changing our conference schedule somewhat. I am looking forward to participating in Intelligent Content for the first time, and Simon is going around the world for tcworld India.
(more…)
Buy The DITA Style Guide in print (and with a 43 percent discount!)
March 7th, 2011 by Alan Pringle
I’m pleased to announce that Tony Self’s new book, The DITA Style Guide, is now available in print. The book is beginning to filter into the listings of online bookstores.
At the moment I wrote this blog entry, bn.com was offering the book for $20.38, which is a whopping 43 percent off the $35.95 cover price. (more…)
Webcast: Discussion forum: STC vice president candidates
March 2nd, 2011 by ScriptoriumTech
Alan Houser and Vici Koster-Lenhardt are running for the office of Vice President of the Society for Technical Communication. If you missed the live webcast, watch this recording to get to know the candidates. (more…)
The DITA Style Guide: going to the printer this week
February 23rd, 2011 by Alan Pringle
Tony Self and the team at Scriptorium have almost wrapped up work on the print edition of Tony’s book, The DITA Style Guide. (Excuse me while I do a private happy dance.) We plan to submit the files to the printer this week, which means the book will be available at online bookstores around the second week of March. Stay tuned for information on the ePub edition, which will come out shortly after the print edition. (more…)
From ePub to Kindle: Technical Writing 101 now has a Kindle edition
February 14th, 2011 by Alan Pringle
We just released the Kindle edition of Technical Writing 101. You can download the Kindle edition instantly from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk. You can also get a free sample if you want to try before you buy.
Contemplating the tablet in tech comm
February 1st, 2011 by Alan Pringle
Ebooks and tablets are helping people read more than they did before: in a recent survey, 66 percent of portable device owners said they were reading more.
That statistic should prompt all technical communicators to think about if—and how—ebooks and other tablet-compatible formats (including apps) fit into their content delivery. (more…)
A makeover for the DITA OT’s PDF Plugin
January 10th, 2011 by ScriptoriumTech
by David Kelly
Adoption of DITA involves a fair number of hurdles, not the least of which is getting nicely formatted output. Two kinds of output in particular present problems: tripane web help, because it is not provided in the DITA OT, and PDF, because the plugin is difficult to modify. My esteemed colleague, Simon Bate, has addressed the tripane help issue, so you can look forward to a blog post from him on that subject.
The state of structure, 2011
January 3rd, 2011 by Sarah O'Keefe
Happy New Year!
In early 2009, we did a rather extensive survey on structured authoring. We asked about plans to implement structured authoring, existing implementations, biggest mistakes, and the like. (more…)
An update on The DITA Style Guide: it’s in technical review
December 16th, 2010 by Alan Pringle
Here’s a quick update on Tony Self’s upcoming book, The DITA Style Guide. (more…)
Once more into the breach…
December 7th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
Back in June, we hired Ryan Fulcher as an intern. Ryan has done great work, and has now been promoted to full-fledged consultant. Congratulations to Ryan!
The bad news, from my point of view, is that we now must look for a new intern. (more…)
Some thoughts on tekom
November 8th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
After a delightful week at the tekom/tcworld conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, I thought I’d capture a few impressions of the event.
First, it’s worth noting that tekom is really several events in one: (more…)
The ePub has landed! The ePub has landed!
June 24th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
Our Technical Writing 101 book is now available in an ePub edition. You can purchase it from our online store or get it from Apple’s iBookstore. (more…)
Increase your DITA literacy with The DITA Style Guide
June 18th, 2010 by Alan Pringle
To help technical communicators get a grasp on all the elements and attributes in DITA, Scriptorium Press will publish The DITA Style Guide: Best Practices for Authors by Tony Self, founder of Hyperwrite and chairperson of the OASIS DITA Help Subcommittee. (more…)
Consulting without commitment
June 10th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
Hiring a consultant can be intimidating. The RFP. The proposal. The prenuptial, er, contract agreement. The budget.
Sometimes, you just need a little bit of help without all of the craziness. For this, we have our new “instant consulting” service.
We have dispensed with all the bells and whistles. You buy as little as an hour of time through our online store. We schedule a mutually agreeable time to discuss your issue. You send any relevant information ahead of that time. At the specified time, we connect by phone (or Skype) and web meeting and go over your topic.
Instant consulting could work for a variety of situations, but we see it as especially helpful for these scenarios:
- Discussing the best strategy for your publishing workflow.
- Reviewing a strategic plan for your publishing workflow before you present it to upper management.
- Getting advice on how to handle a specific management challenge.
- Reviewing vendor proposals or helping to develop big-picture requirements.
We are open to other assignments that are of limited scope.
The cost is $300 for an hour; $1000 for four hours. You can buy in our store.
Of course, we continue to offer Big Project Consulting for larger engagements.
Free to a good home…industry research
May 12th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
In early 2009, we did some research on XML adoption rates and collected the results in a fairly lengthy report. Here is the summary:
In early 2009, Scriptorium Publishing conducted a survey to measure how and why technical communicators are adopting structured authoring.
The survey received 616 responses. 29 percent of respondents indicated that they had already implemented structured authoring. Only 16 percent indicated that they do not plan to implement structured authoring. The remaining respondents were either in the process of implementing structured authoring (14 percent), planning to do so (20 percent), or were considering it (21 percent).
Content reuse and document consistency were given as the most important reasons for moving to structured authoring followed by the cost/effort of developing content.
The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is by far the most common structure being implemented. Use of DITA did not correlate with lower implementation cost.
A strong majority (67 percent) of respondents who indicated that they did not plan to implement structured authoring gave cost and time of implementation as the reason.
The most common authoring tools reported are Arbortext Editor, Adobe FrameMaker (structured), and JustSystems XMetaL. SynchRO Soft oXygen ranked well among DITA implementers.
You can get the whole thing on our white papers page.
It’s Technical Writing 101′s birthday, but YOU can get the gift of a free copy
May 11th, 2010 by Alan Pringle
It’s been a year since we released the third edition of Technical Writing 101, and I’d like to thank readers for offering us positive feedback on the new edition. I have to admit it’s gratifying to read comments such as this one from Peg Mulligan:
The discussions on Structured Authoring with XML, and Web 2.0 and Technical Documentation, are among the most concisely written, best stand-alone explanations that I have seen on these subjects.
To celebrate the third edition’s first birthday, we’re giving away a printed copy. Also, we have just five copies left of the second edition, and we will give the winner one of those copies, too. It will soon be a collector’s edition! (Yeah, right.)
The contest ends on Wednesday, May 26, so enter soon!
We owe special thanks to the many instructors who have used the book to educate new technical writers. If you teach technical writing and would like to review Technical Writing 101 for your classes, contact us at books@scriptorium.com.
Talk amongst yourselves…introducing forums.scriptorium.com
February 9th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
Our web site now has forums for discussions of technical communication issues. We want to give you, our readers, a venue where you can set your own agenda instead of just responding to our blog posts.
Given Scriptorium’s particular interests, I expect to see a lot of emphasis on publishing automation and XML. But frankly, we don’t know exactly what might happen. Communities often develop in unexpected ways. It will be up to you—and us—to figure out what direction these forums go.
(We have an internal pool on how long before Godwin’s law is applied.)
The forums are available in our main site navigation. There are also RSS feeds so you can subscribe to a topic or category of interest. Or, if you prefer, you can get email notifications for new forum posts.
And how do we feel about this launch? We’re…perfectly calm.
Please join the conversation.
ePub + tech pub = ?
January 29th, 2010 by Alan Pringle
At Scriptorium earlier this week, we all watched live blogs of the iPad announcement. (What else would you expect from a bunch of techies?) One feature of the iPad that really got us talking (and thinking) is its support of the ePub open standard for ebooks.
ePub is basically a collection of XHTML files zipped up with some baggage files. Considering a lot of technical documentation groups create HTML output as a deliverable, it’s likely not a huge step further to create an ePub version of the content. There is a transform for DocBook to ePub; there is a similar effort underway for DITA. You can also save InDesign files to ePub.
While the paths to creating an ePub version seem pretty straightforward, does it make sense to release technical content as an ebook? I think a lot of the same reasons for releasing online content apply (less tree death, no printing costs, and interactivity, in particular), but there are other issues to consider, too: audience, how quickly ebook readers and software become widespread, how the features and benefits of the format stack up against those of PDF files and browser-based help, and so on. And there’s also the issue of actually leveraging the features of an output instead of merely doing the minimum of releasing text and images in that format. (In the PDF version of a user manual, have you ever clicked an entry in the table of contents only to discover the TOC has no links? When that happens, I assume the company that released the content was more interested in using the format to offload the printing costs on to me and less interested in using PDF as a way to make my life easier.)
The technology supporting ebooks will continue to evolve, and there likely will be a battle to see which ebook file format(s) will reign supreme. (I suspect Apple’s choice of the ePub format will raise that format’s prospects.) While the file formats get shaken out and ebooks continue to emerge as a way to disseminate content, technical communicators would be wise to determine how the format could fit into their strategies for getting information to end users.
What considerations come to your mind when evaluating the possibility of releasing your content in ePub (or other ebook) format?
XML for Lone Writers?
January 5th, 2010 by Sarah O'Keefe
My December article for STC Intercom, XML & Lone Writers: Can They Go Together? is now available. From the conclusion:
The relatively low percentage of lone writers who have implemented XML is a logical result of the typical lone writer working environment. Although it is possible for lone writers to implement XML, a very cautious evaluation of the idea is definitely in order. Given the current status of the authoring and publishing tools, any lone writer who implements XML will need to master fairly demanding tools and technologies.
The stars of this article are the members of the Lone Writer SIG mailing list, who generously responded to a request for information.
XML & Lone Writers: Can They Go Together? (PDF, 200K)
Tech Writing 101: Now certified as excellent
December 21st, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
Happy news in my email this afternoon:
The STC Carolina chapter has completed judging of the 2009-2010 Technical Publications Competition. For your Technical Writing 101: A Real World Guide to Planning and Writing Technical Content (third edition) entry, you have received an Award of Excellence. Congratulations on your accomplishment!
Congratulations to Alan Pringle, who did most of the work on the 3rd (and previous) editions.
You can order the book at amazon.com.
Are you ready for mobile content?
December 16th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
A report from Morgan Stanley states that mobile Internet use will be twice that of desktop Internet and that the iPhone/smartphone “may prove to be the fastest ramping and most disruptive technology product / service launch the world has ever seen.” That “disruption” is already affecting the methods for distributing technical content.
With users having Internet access at their fingertips anywhere they go, Internet searches will continue to drive how people find product information. Desktop Internet use has greatly reshaped how technical communicators distribute information, and having twice as many people using mobile Internet will only push us toward more online delivery—and in formats (some yet to be developed, I’d guess) that are compatible with smaller smartphone screens.
The growing number of people with mobile Internet access underscores the importance of high Internet search rankings and a social media strategy for your information. If you haven’t already investigated optimizing your content for search engines and integrating social media as part of your development and distribution efforts, it’s probably wise to do that sooner rather than later. Also, have you looked at how your web site is displayed on a smartphone?
If you don’t consider the impact of the mobile Internet, your documentation may be relegated to the Island of Misfit Manuals, where change pages and manuals in three-ring binders spend their days yellowing away.
Closeout pricing on FrameMaker 7 and 8 reference books
November 9th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
We have drastically lowered the prices of our reference books on FrameMaker 7 and 8:
- The PDF download of Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7 is now $14.99. (The download was $39.99.)
- The combination of the printed book and PDF download of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 is now $19.99, and the PDF download is $14.99. (The printed version’s cover price is $49.99.)
So, if you’re still in the market for books about the previous versions of FrameMaker, you can find yourself a real bargain by buying directly from Scriptorium.
PS: You can also purchase the printed FrameMaker 8 book from us through Amazon Marketplace for $19.99 (plus shipping).
Contest for The Compass ends Sunday: enter today!
October 22nd, 2009 by Alan Pringle
If you’d like to win a free copy of our white paper compilation, The Compass, enter the drawing by Sunday:
We’ll announce three winners on Monday.
Win a copy of The Compass
October 16th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Our white paper compilation, The Compass (ISBN 9780970473387), is now available at online bookstores, including amazon.com, amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, and bn.com. You can also special order a copy at your local bookstore. The cover price is $15.95 (USD), but some online sellers are offering the book at a discount.
To celebrate the release of The Compass, we’re giving away three copies.
We’ll announce the winners on October 26. Good luck!
FYI: If you plan to attend LavaCon (October 24-27 in New Orleans), you can get a free copy of The Compass from Sarah O’Keefe. She will give away a limited number of copies while she’s at the conference.
XML 101
September 29th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
My latest XML Strategist article, “The ABCs of XML,” is available as a PDF file (144K). This article was originally published in the September/October 2009 issue of Intercom.
The technical side of XML is not much more difficult than HTML; if you can handle a few HTML angle brackets you can learn XML. [...] If [...] you don’t like using styles and
prefer to format everything as you go, you are going to loathe structured authoring.
Just trying to make sure that there are no surprises. The article itself is a very basic introduction to the principles that make XML important for technical communication: automation, baseline architecture (sorry…I had problems with B), and consistency.
Conversion Is Dirty – 2300 Years Later (Part γ of γ)
September 9th, 2009 by ScriptoriumTech
by David Kelly
In previous installments I gave a worm’s-eye look at the details of our work with papyrological texts, and a satellite-level thumbnail sketch of the history of the documents and their contents. Now it’s time for a street-level view of how our work fits into the present.
From the point of view of the texts, the definition of “audience” has made an extreme shift. Tax records, contracts, letters, and so forth, long ago lost their primary audiences, but now scholars are interested in the documents. For some of those scholars, the degraded texts represent a challenge for reconstructing the original content. These are the papyrologists, the people we have been engaged to help. Once the texts have been reconstructed as much as possible, other students of Classical times use them for a variety of purposes.
The condition of the papyrus is only one of the problems faced by papyrologists. Questions of provenance, poor handwriting, faded ink, and access to remote storage locations are other issues. And then there are the publication methods used to engage the academic community in discussion and consensus about a given scholar’s results.
We learned, for instance, that since the late 1800s when the transcription of papyri started being addressed by the academic community, only 60,000 documents have been transcribed. It is a slow, painstaking process that requires special training at graduate levels in Classical Literature. Funding is spotty, but the need is still significant. At the University of Berlin alone there are 50,000 papyri waiting to be addressed.
The publication cycle for transcriptions and commentary on papyri is slow. In the Papyrology Room at Duke, the shelves are filled with academic journals, some of which are published on an annual basis, many less frequently. Publication of a document consists of the scholar’s transcription from the original papyrus (or a high quality reproduction) to the typographical format using the Leiden conventions mentioned earlier. It is a highly specialized publication process. Once a document is published in a journal (after, one imagines, years of waiting), other scholars examine the document and, if possible, compare it to the original or to a facsimile. (Facsimiles are seldom available in the journal containing the transcription, presumably because photographic reproductions are expensive.) If there are corrections or commentary to add to the transcriptions, it may be years before they are published in another journal.
Surely there must be a better way to make this information available to the scholars and interested parties of the world.
The IDP initiative was conceived to address many of these problems. The target of this initiative is to have a web location where transcriptions, translations, and digitized images of the original papyri are available and indexed against each other. Existing publications are in the process of being converted and cleaned up. (This is where Simon and I came in.) In addition to the primary sources, the website will include facilities for commenting on the texts, adding new documents, and having the ability for a community of scholars to participate in reviewing and publishing new or changed materials. Publication cycles may be reduced from years to days. And instead of having to travel to select universities with papyrology programs and cloistered libraries, anyone with Internet access would be able to read and view the most recent advances in papyrological scholarship.
You can get a preview and a feel for the information system by looking at a predecessor system, APIS (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/apis/index.html)(A new prototype interface is available at http://papyri.info).
Toward the end of the project, Simon and I discussed the feelings we had about participating in the present phase of an information chain that went all the way back to ancient Greek civilization. For one thing, there was an enormous feeling of responsibility to get it right. There was also a sense of honor and humility in being included in the history of these texts. These documents came long before us, and now they will bear some (hopefully transparent) mark of our impact on them. For a long, long time.
We have learned a dramatic lesson that the records we generate or pass along may have a life that persists long after we are gone. As we manipulate information with various tagging schemes, as we choose storage media and identify audiences for our delivery methods, it may be helpful to reflect on time scales that go beyond our immediate deliverables.
Someone a few months – or a few millenia – down the road may thank you.
Conversion is Dirty – 2300 Years Later (Part β of γ)
September 3rd, 2009 by ScriptoriumTech
by David Kelly
Aside from the pulp-story like beginning, the story of our project with the Integrating Digital Papyrology (IDP) initiative provides a fascinating case study in what happens to text over time. The time scale is exaggerated, but it provides a not-unfamiliar scenario for the kinds of things that can happen to text. Writers beware! The story includes composition errors, archiving inadequacies, data degradation, restoration procedures, translation, analysis, repurposing due to audience shifts, structuring, markup conversion, acceleration of publication methods – the works.
For myself, the excitement of this story focused on two moments in the Papyrology Room. The first came when one of the participants pulled a volume from the shelves and opened it. The book comprised a photographic reproduction of a scroll containing the original Constitution of Athens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Athenians). This is an artifact discovered in 1879 that may have been written by Aristotle or one of his students. I learned that of the 169 constitutions written by Aristotle and his students, this is the only one to survive. It survived because the back of it was used for tax records, which apparently were considered much more important than landmark documents in the history of human civilization. (History lesson: File your taxes on the backs of your most important documents.)
The second moment came when we were able to get up close with a papyrus that was being studied by a graduate student. Sandwiched between two sheets of glass, it was a grid of pounded papyrus reed fiber with significant deterioration, particularly in the areas where two soft sections of the reed matter intersected. Across this surface, approximately 1800 years old, you could see the neatly scribed, pale ink handwriting in ancient Greek.
NOTE: The following is a palimpsest on papyrus dating from between 350 and 351 A.D. This image is available from a web page titled “Declaration on oath (P.Duk.inv. 11 R),” http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/records/11r.html. This image is reproduced by kind permission of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library of Perkins Library at Duke University. All rights regarding the use of this image are governed by the copyright statements at this location: http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/services/copyright.html .
I had a strange feeling that this was some kind of time machine. I could sense the brush of an ancient hand across the page, dabbing the surface with an inked, chisel-edged reed. I felt a mind present in the paper with something that needed to be said, not just 1800 years ago, but for a long, long time. Our host explained that this was a marriage contract that gave the groom the right to build on part of a monastery owned by the bride. It was an utterly singular object. More importantly, it seemed to capture something of the human spirit, holding it in a way that could speak across a huge arc of time.
This is not an experience I get very often at work.
Many steps in the story have to be reconstructed at this point. Documents were stored in jars and shelves in houses, temples, and government storage buildings. Libraries were sacked or burned for cultural reasons, reducing the number of copies of documents. Languages, cultures, and writing materials changed drastically over the centuries. Whole cities were lost and forgotten. Moisture, mold, fire and vermin had their way with the papyrus fibers. It is a wonder anything survived.
Then came late Medieval and early Renaissance times. Scholars like Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola began translating and promoting works from ancient languages, making them available and relevant to the cultural changes leading to the Renaissance and the renewal of Western Civilization. Subsequent to the translations came corrections, commentary, and searches for definitive sources. The Renaissance accelerated scientific study, resulting in a revised sense of time based on geological observations. The change in the sense of time revived interest in ancient stories, such as Homer’s epics, which in turn led to archeological expeditions looking for evidence of the historical truths behind literature and other writings. Old cities were uncovered, and there, in the jars, shelves, and boxes where they had been waiting for centuries, were the fragile records of long forgotten humans.
Next installment: The story continues into present.
Conversion is Dirty – 2300 Years Later (Part α of γ)
September 1st, 2009 by ScriptoriumTech
by David Kelly
We think of structured text and XML as being for content that changes rapidly, because that’s what those tools are good for. So why did we get involved in a conversion project where the content is from millenia-old papyri written in ancient Greek?
On a gray spring day, Simon Bate and I found ourselves in the small Papyrology Room in a sub-basement of Perkins Library at Duke University. I scanned the spines of old papyrological journals while we viewed arcane diagrams on a large flat-panel screen and listened to the meeting’s organizer. The screen flickered and went solid black. Cell phones came out, people went running out of the room…
We were a motley group, assembled for obscure purposes, hungry for information about the dirty task at hand. Leaning intently over the table were the Scottish professor from Heidelberg, a specialist from London College, and our hosts, scholars of Classical Studies from Duke University and New York University. The rest came from around the States with a variety of software backgrounds. An unlikely group, indeed. What ancient secrets were we poised to unleash?
The story deepened as we listened. In 1931, Leiden, the Netherlands, a select group of classical scholars met to establish conventions for indicating the conditions of texts when transcribing the text from papyri to type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiden_Conventions). Later, Dr. David Woodley Packard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Woodley_Packard) would devise a form of SGML for transcribing the Leiden conventions into digital media, even building his own computers to store them (yes, he was the son of THAT David Packard). The SGML was given to Columbia University, and from there it went through an obscure trail, including merges and matches with other forms of digital markup from other universities.
Now our hosts were talking about a more generalized form of markup, the EpiDoc (http://idp.atlantides.org/trac/idp/wiki/EpiDoc) standard of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) (http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml). The activities are organized under the rubric of Integrating Digital Papyrology (IDP) (http://idp.atlantides.org/), which is described as “a collaboration between the Duke Data Bank of Documentary Papyri (DDBDP), the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens (HGV), the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS), and several leading research institutions.” Various parts of the project are funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.
Our heads were swimming.
NOTE: The following image is of a letter on papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, written in Greek dating from the second century AD. This image is in the public domain and was reproduced from this location on Wikipedia: http://hsb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dataja:Ac_papyrus.png. Please see this website for additional information about this papyrus.
Despite all the signs of an archeological pulp-story adventure, we were there for a typical business reason. Huge amounts of tagged text needed cleanup after having been converted to EpiDoc.
One of the big problems was with Greek numbers. The ancient Greeks had a curious numeric notation system before those neat Arabic numbers came along. The complexity of numbers, combined with the complexity of the Leiden textual markup conventions, had given fits to an earlier conversion of the markup. It was time to call in the Pros from Dover. (Insert film clip of David and Simon as Hawkeye and Trapper John entering the operating room in a military hospital in Japan, golf bags in tow, umbrella at the ready.)
In ancient Greek, numbers are represented by the letters of the alphabet – with a twist. The character used depends on what place the number is in. For example, the numeral one in the one’s place is a lowercase alpha (α). In the tens place it is a lowercase iota, which looks like a one (ι). In the hundreds place it becomes a lowercase rho (ρ). And in the thousands place, it becomes an uppercase Alpha (А). So the number 1111 is Αρια. Pity the poor schoolchildren.
It gets worse: the character for the one’s-place number 6 doesn’t occur in the standard alphabet, but is called Stigma, and you have to install special fonts to represent it. A 90 is a Qoppa, which is in the extended UTF-8 character set – and which has four characters associated with it, depending on whether it is being used as a number or a letter. A 900 is a Sampi, sort of a left-leaning crescent moon with two strokes in the middle of the inside curve.
One kind of problem comes when Leiden convention characters are introduced into a number. For example, the original typographical markup in Leiden conventions might have been:
Αω[μζ]
In Arabic numbers this is 1847, with the “[47]” part being supplied by the editor. (The reason for being able to supply the “47” might be internal clues within the document or references to other documents.)
Now the SGML conversion takes place, resulting in the following:
<num>18</num>[<num>47</num>]
The square brackets still appear, and because there is no space between the <num> elements and the open square bracket, the syntax still represents the fact that this is a single string of numerals, i.e., 1847. But the place values associated with the Greek characters have been “lost in translation.” Look what happens when this number gets converted to EpiDoc in the first round:
<num value=”18″>ιη</num><supplied reason=”lost” cert=”high”><num value=”47″>μζ</num></supplied>
The EpiDoc conversion is based on the value of each <num> element, so the 18 gets incorrectly converted to an iota-nu, and the 47 gets correctly converted to a mu-zeta. The correct value for the “18″ is actually 1800, so the Greek should have been, as in the original, Alpha-omega, or Αω. For scholars, we were told, the iota-nu is egregious nonsense.
Our transform had to find all instances where a <num> element was followed by (or contained) one or more <num> elements and did not have an intervening space. Having found these instances, the transform then reconstructed the initial number value and supplied the correct Greek characters with the correct tagging sequence. The original markup in Leiden conventions was 18[47]. So the correct solution for EpiDoc would be as follows:
<num value=”1847″>Αω<supplied reason=”lost”>μζ</supplied></num>
In fact, I copied this string from a report that was prepared to show the proposed transforms before we applied them to the text. Once the report was approved, the transforms were applied to (deep breath here) 60,000 XML files representing the combined papyrological scholarship of the entire planet for the last 78 years.
We HAD to get it right – or the consequences could be millenial.
Stay tuned for Parts β and γ of this serial blog – coming soon to a Palimpsest near you.
Liberated type
August 25th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
(or should that be “Liberated typoes?”)
We have opened up free access to two of our white papers:
- Hacking the DITA Open Toolkit, available in HTML or PDF (435 KB, 19 pages)
- FrameMaker 8 and DITA Technical Reference, available in PDF (5 MB, 55 pages)
These used to be paid downloads.
Why the change of heart? Most of our business is consulting. To get consulting, we have to show competence. These white papers are one way to demonstrate our technical expertise.
(By this logic, our webcasts should also be free, but I’m not ready to go there. Why? We have fixed costs associated with the webcast hosting platform. Plus, once we schedule a webcast, we have to deliver it at the scheduled time, even if we’d rather be doing paying work. By contrast, we can squeeze in white paper development at our convenience.)
What are your thoughts? We are obviously not the only organization dealing with this issue…
Is this thing on?
August 24th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
If you are reading this, then we have succeeded in migrating our web site over to WordPress.
Of course, the process of managing our own content always takes a back seat to working with our customers’ content, so the process took longer than you might expect.
We did learn a couple of things, most of which should sound awfully familiar if you are working on your own content strategy:
- It’s not until you try to move into a new system that you recognize all the mistakes you made the previous system.
- PHP stands for Picky Hypochondriac Programming. I had several cases where code absolutely refused to work for no apparent reason. I had the resident PHP expert (Simon) look it over. Eventually, I gave up and retyped the code, and then it worked.
- Learn to work with the tool and not against it. I have to credit a former coworker, Bruce Bicknell, for this little gem, which he originally applied to Word versus FrameMaker. When moving from Dreamweaver-based HTML to WordPress, take some time to learn best practices for WordPress. Don’t try to impose your existing Way of Doing Things onto the new system. It’s inefficient and it probably won’t work.
- Content migration is always awful. To transfer our blog, I found a blogger-to-WordPress converter. That worked pretty well, except that a couple of posts now have my name on them even though I didn’t write them. Transferring comments was a travesty that involved the support people at Haloscan (helpful) and cleaning out random comment triplication (gross manual labor).
But I hope you like the new site and blog. Please poke around and leave us feedback.
Closeout sale on second edition of Technical Writing 101: now $12.95
August 19th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
We still have a few copies left of the second edition of Technical Writing 101. I want these last copies out of the office (how’s that for truth in advertising?), so I have marked them down to $12.95. You can get free shipping within the U.S. when you purchase through our store.
We’re also offering the book for $12.95 through our Amazon.com store, but there is no free shipping there. (We’re also selling slightly damaged copies at Amazon for $10.95.)
If you prefer to get the latest edition, you can download it in PDF format for $20.
Printed version of Technical Writing 101 now sold at infibeam.com
July 17th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
The printed version of Technical Writing 101 (third edition) is currently available at infibeam.com, which provides free shipping to cities in India. At the time of this posting, Infibeam is offering the book for 1407 rupees (24 percent off the list price).
Those who want instant access to Technical Writing 101 can download it in PDF format from our online store for $20 (USD).
Publishing Fundamentals print/PDF bundle: $24.99 for 24 hours
July 14th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Our big sale on Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 starts tomorrow morning.
From 8 a.m. tomorrow until 8 a.m. Thursday (Eastern time), you can purchase the print and PDF bundle of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 for just $24.99. That’s half off the list price of $49.99 (and cheaper than the cost of just the PDF download, which is $29.99).
You don’t need a coupon code to get the special price: just order within the 24-hour window.
On Wednesday, July 15: big one-day sale
July 10th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
I always laugh when department stores advertise a one-day sale and then have a “preview day” on the day before. Last time I checked, that’s a two-day sale.
Well, we’re going to have a big one-day sale on Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 next Wednesday, and we really mean a one-day sale. From 8 a.m. on July 15 until 8 a.m. July 16 (Eastern time), you can purchase the print and PDF bundle of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 for just $24.99. That’s $25 off the list price of $49.99–and cheaper than the cost of just the PDF download, which is $29.99.
You don’t need a coupon code to get this special price on the print and PDF bundle, and you can order multiple copies, too. Just be sure to order sometime between 8 a.m. Wednesday and 8 a.m. Thursday.
Please spread the word about this sale!
Congratulations to contest winners…
July 1st, 2009 by Alan Pringle
…Bjørn Smalbro and Dave Truman, who will receive printed copies of Technical Writing 101.
Thanks to everyone who entered the drawing. Even if you didn’t win, you should have received an email with a coupon code for $5 off the PDF download of the book. (If you indicated that you teach technical writing, you should have received a code for a free review copy.)
Keith Soltys posted a review of Technical Writing 101 on his Core Dump blog yesterday. I’m pleased to report the review is positive.
A special alert to my fellow bargain hunters out there: Amazon.com is selling Technical Writing 101 at a steep discount. At the time I posted this blog entry, Amazon is offering the book for $23.73 (34 percent off the $35.95 cover price). The price does fluctuate, so who knows how long that discount will be in effect.
Enter soon: Technical Writing 101 contest ends tomorrow
June 29th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
We’re giving away two printed copies of Technical Writing 101 (third edition) on Wednesday. Please enter the drawing before it closes tomorrow.
We’re giving away the books to celebrate the book’s wider release to online bookstores such as Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and BN.com; you can also place a special order for Technical Writing 101 at your local bookstore. If you want instant access to the book, you can download the PDF version for $20 from our online store.
We achieved this wider distribution by working with another print on demand (POD) company, Lightning Source. We’re quite happy with the quality of the books from our other POD partner, Lulu.com. However, at this time, Lulu doesn’t offer distribution for publishers who use their own International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs). We’ve released books under our own ISBNs since we published the first edition of Technical Writing 101 in 2000, and I frankly was not comfortable assigning an ISBN owned by a POD firm to content we developed. Using a publisher’s ISBN would cause problems if we wanted to switch to another publisher later. We’d have to assign a new ISBN, and then the book would be in the marketplace with two different ISBNs. I wanted to prevent that marketing (and distribution) headache from ever happening.
I’m not going to write a long post about the virtues of Lulu.com and other POD publishers vs. Lightning Source because many other people have done that (in this blog post, for example). What I will say, though, is that Lightning Source is geared more toward experienced publishers, and Lulu provides more guidance that newer authors and publishers will certainly appreciate. If you want to get your feet wet in the POD pool, Lulu is a great place to start, but if you’re a publisher who has published several titles with your own ISBNs, Lightning Source may be better suited for your needs.
Win a printed copy of Technical Writing 101 (third edition)
June 24th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
As of this week, the printed version of Technical Writing 101 (ISBN 9780970473363) is available at online bookstores, and you can also special order a copy from your local bookstore. To celebrate the book’s wider distribution, we’re giving away two printed copies.
Enter the contest by June 30 (next Tuesday). We’ll pick two winners at random on July 1.
The printed book is now listed at many online stores, including Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and BN.com. (FYI to all you bargain hunters out there: some of these stores are selling the book at a discount and with free shipping, too.)
For those of you who want instant (and cheaper) access to the book, we’re still offering the PDF download (ISBN 9780970473370) for $20. The download (which has been particularly popular with buyers outside the US) is available only through our online store.
Later, I’ll write more about how we achieved the wider distribution of the printed version through our new print-on-demand partner, Lightning Source, and how Lightning Source compares to Lulu.com.
Webcast: Structured authoring survey results
May 27th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
June 16, 11 a.m. 1 p.m. Eastern time
I will be reprising my STC conference presentation, “The State of Structure in Technical Communication.” This webcast will discuss some of the results from our industry survey on structured authoring.
If you can’t wait that long, the report itself is available in our store.
Register for the webcast
Think global
May 26th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
We are joining with a couple of other technical communication companies to form the TechComm Alliance:
Three companies—Cherryleaf Ltd., HyperWrite, and Scriptorium Publishing—are forming TechComm Alliance to help us handle technical communication projects around the world. We are located in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, respectively, and each company has customers in both its home location and in other countries. TechComm Alliance will make it easier to work with global companies that need services worldwide.
How will this work? We expect to:
- Work together on large projects that require support in multiple locations. For instance, Scriptorium might be implementing structured authoring for a U.S. company that also has operations in Europe and Australia. During rollout, instead of sending a Scriptorium consultant around the world, we partner with Cherryleaf for the training in Europe and with HyperWrite for the training in Australia. The result? Our customer saves on travel expenses, and our consultants spend less time in airplanes.
- Refer projects to each other. Each company has (and will continue to have) clients around the world. When we feel that a local presence would benefit the customer, we can refer the project to our alliance partners.
- Produce webinars and other events together. I’d like for Scriptorium customers to benefit from the expertise of our partners, and we are working on joint webinars.
This weekend, get $5 off printed copies of Technical Writing 101
May 21st, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Starting tomorrow through Monday, you can get $5 off a printed copy of Technical Writing 101, which is normally $35.95. To get the discount, use the code MEMORIAL09 during checkout at Lulu.com.
Here is Lulu’s fine print on the coupon code:
Offer valid on orders placed within the United States only. Enter code ‘MEMORIAL09’ during checkout and save $5.00 off any purchase of $25.00 or more. Discount cannot be used to pay for, nor shall be applied to, applicable taxes or shipping and handling charges. Promotional codes cannot be applied to any previous orders. No exchanges or substitutions allowed. Only one valid promotional code may be used per account. Offer valid from 05/22/09 through 05/25/09 at 11:59 PM GMT. Lulu.com reserves the right to change or revoke this offer at any time. Void where prohibited. Please note that coupon code is case-sensitive.
Get 10 percent off a printed copy of Technical Writing 101
May 15th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
If you have been waiting for a discount to purchase a printed copy of the third edition of Technical Writing 101, now is your chance. Through May 31, 2009, use the code MAYCONTEST10 during checkout to get 10 percent off when buying a printed copy from Lulu.com. The printed version is $35.95 (before the discount). FYI: the discount isn’t applied to shipping or taxes.
Technical Writing 101 is also available as a $20 download from our online store (but the Lulu discount doesn’t work there).
By the way, if you received a coupon code for entering our contest, use that code now! The discount code expires today.
Technical Writing 101 contest: and the winners are…
May 8th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Congratulations to Ravindra Kumar, Judy Walters, and Axel Regnet, who each won a free download of Technical Writing 101. As a thank-you to entrants who didn’t win a free copy, we offered a $5 discount off the $20 price.
All entrants should have received an email with a coupon code for a free download or $5 off. We appreciate your interest in our books.
Enter today: Technical Writing 101 giveaway ends tomorrow
May 6th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
We are closing our drawing for free downloads of Technical Writing 101 tomorrow. If you haven’t already entered the contest, enter today. We’ll pick three winners and notify them via email on Friday.
If you want to sneak a peek at what’s in the new edition, you can read the table of contents and excerpts from two chapters (PDF), and you can see the preview provided by Google Book Search. (Be forewarned that some pages in the Google preview weren’t processed cleanly, but they are still readable.)
Technical Writing 101 is now available. Win a free download!
April 29th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Technical Writing 101 (third edition) is now available for purchase! You can instantly download the PDF version from our online store for $20, or you can order a printed copy from Lulu.com for $35.95. We’re also offering a site license for $250: you can download the PDF version and distribute it up to 20 people.
To celebrate the book’s release, we’re giving away three downloads of the book. Enter the drawing by May 7. We’ll notify the winners via email.
Enter the drawing today!
If you’re an instructor and would like to review the book for your classes, contact us at books@scriptorium.com. In your message, tell us about the courses for which you’re considering the book and how many students attend those classes each year.
Structured authoring in technical communication
April 27th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
I am pleased to announce the publication of our newest white paper, The State of Structured Authoring in Technical Communication. In early 2009, we conducted a survey on structured authoring; this document presents the results of the survey along with our analysis.
Those who participated in the survey are entitled to a free copy of the report. If you requested a copy via email, you will receive a message within the next 2 business days with download instructions. If you requested a printed copy, those will go in the mail tomorrow.
The report is also available for purchase and immediate download. The cost is $200 for the 38-page report (plus 18 pages that reproduce the survey questions, so the file is 56 pages long).
I’m also delivering a presentation at next week’s STC Summit in Atlanta, which discusses the results of the survey. If you’re attending the conference, I hope you’ll join me on Monday, May 5, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in Regency V for “The State of Structure.”
Technical Writing 101: new edition, new approach
April 22nd, 2009 by Alan Pringle
In early May, we will release the third edition of Technical Writing 101: A Real-World Guide to Planning and Writing Technical Content. We published the second edition in 2003, so it was time for an update. A lot has changed in technical communication since then!
You may have noticed a change in the book’s subtitle: the previous editions’ subtitles mention “Writing Technical Documentation,” but the new edition focuses on “Writing Technical Content.” We made that change because “documentation” conjures thoughts of printed manuals, which are no longer the primary form of output for many companies (or the new edition of Technical Writing 101, but more on that later). Because a lot of product information is now online, we added information about multimedia content to the chapter on visual communication, and we also revised the chapter on production editing to include information about reviewing online output.
Today’s tech writers are handling more and more aspects of the technical publishing process; fewer companies employ full-time editors and production staff. The new edition—which is 44 pages longer than its predecessor—accounts for this shift in roles. Other big changes in the third edition include new content about DITA and Web 2.0. DITA’s use has grown exponentially since we released the second edition, so it was essential for us to introduce DITA to prospective technical writers. The use of blogs, forums, and wikis has also had a profound influence on technical communication in the past few years, so we added a chapter that explains the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on technical writing. For more information about what’s in the new edition, check out the table of contents (PDF, 135 KB).
Perhaps the biggest change for this edition isn’t in the content: for the first time, we are releasing this title in PDF format. For $20, you will be able to download the new edition instantly from our online store. As with our other PDF-based books, the file will have no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions that prevent printing or that lock the file to a particular computer. Those who prefer a printed book can buy one in the near future from Lulu.com, which prints books on demand. A printed copy will be $35.95: the same cost as the second edition, despite the increased page count.
This is our first foray into print-on-demand books. After some number-crunching, we decided we did not want to print copies in advance and distribute them ourselves for this edition. Distributing your own printed book entails a lot of money and work: pay a printer to print and ship cases of books to you, store those cases of books, ship copies all over the world, deal with bulk returns from bookstores, and so on. We have seen a decline in the revenue from printed books (as have other publishers), so we thought it was time to try digital downloads as the primary method of selling the new edition of Technical Writing 101.
Many schools have adopted the book as a textbook since we released the first edition in 2000, and we hope the $20 price for the digital version will make it even more accessible to students—and to anyone who is considering a career in technical writing.
If you’re an instructor and would like to review the latest edition, please contact us at books@scriptorium.com. We’ll send you a coupon code so you can download the PDF version at no cost from our online store.
Watch this blog and our newsletter, Illuminations, for more details about the upcoming release.
DITA adoption increasing overall structured authoring adoption
March 30th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
I’m knee-deep in survey data analysis. With over 600 responses, our recent structured authoring survey was hugely successful–thank you. Many respondents added candid details about their experiences with structured authoring implementation–their fears, mistakes, and biggest surprises.
The survey report will be available later this month (free to participants, $200 for others), but I wanted to give you a couple of preliminary highlights:
- About 30 percent of respondents said that they are currently using structured authoring.
- There’s a lot of hype around DITA, but our data indicates that it’s backed up by reality. Consider this chart, which shows the top three types of structure (custom, DocBook, or DITA) implemented, being implemented, or planned.
DITA dominates the chart. But it looks as though DITA is additive. That is, it’s not cannibalizing the numbers for DocBook or custom structures. Those numbers are relatively flat. Instead, it looks as though DITA is increasing the total number of implementations.
If you are attending the STC Summit this year, I’m doing a presentation on the survey results on Monday, May 4, at 1:30 p.m., called “The State of Structure.”
What do Tech Writers Want?
March 26th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
Answer? I don’t know, but The Content Wrangler is conducting a survey to find out. Here’s the announcement:
2009 is a touch economic year for most of us. Companies are cutting back on nice-to-have purchases and focusing in on what’s necessary. This survey conducted by The Content Wrangler aims to help us better understand your training needs for 2009 and to identify the types of classes you need. We plan to use this information to help training providers create relevant public and on-site training programs that address your needs and to gain an understanding of the current state of training program interest in our industry today.
In case you need further motivation, there is also a random drawing for some goodies. The survey has only five questions, so it should be quick.
How to Get a Job
March 9th, 2009 by Sarah O'Keefe
[update to correct bad links]
This is the best advice for job seekers I’ve ever seen. India Amos writes about her pile of resumes:
And do you want to know what’s the most striking thing about most of these hopefuls? They are completely wasting their time. And mine, of course, but mostly their own. Because they’re not only not going to get a job with me, they’re not going to get a job with anyone unless that person is as slovenly and illiterate as these applicants.
She proceeds to offer some excellent advice in numerous categories. Here are some excerpts from a lengthy list about formatting:
- Learn to use style sheets, so that you can make your heading styles consistent. If you choose to ignore my request for a PDF résumé, try to make sure your Word attachment doesn’t demonstrate to me what a slob you are, formatting everything locally and aligning text using spaces instead of tabs.
- Don’t Capitalize Everything. I Cannot Emphasize This Enough. It Makes You Look Like a 419 Scammer.
- Violet 9pt Arial is probably not a good choice for anything.
Hehe. (sob)
Related to this: How Not to Get a Job (Palimpsest, December 2007)
Of course, in today’s economy, lots of people need jobs. So here is some long-promised advice on how to get a job:
- Apply for jobs where your skillset is relevant. In this job market, with tons of job seekers, you are unlikely to get the “stretch” position. So, look for positions that are equivalent to your last position, that you are uniquely qualified for, or that you are slightly overqualified for. For instance, let’s say you are a technical writer with five years of experience and “the usual” complement of technical skills. What is your unique qualification? If you speak some Japanese, look for Japanese companies where your language skills might be useful. If your undergraduate degree is in music, look for a company that makes music software or products related to music. In other words, look for a position where your outside interests are also relevant. But, at a minimum, apply only for positions that you are reasonably qualified for. It’s tempting, especially when you really need a job Right Now, to take the firehose approach and spray resumes everywhere. It doesn’t work. Focus your job search and send out a smaller number of really good applications.
- Do your homework. Before contacting the company, investigate. Read their web site, read any recent news coverage. Look them up on LinkedIn and see if you know anyone in the organization. (You are on LinkedIn, right?) Use the information you find to make your application more relevant. If you get an interview, do more homework before the interview.
- When you apply for the job, follow the #!%$#!%#! instructions. If asked for PDF, provide PDF. If asked for Word, provide Word. Et cetera.
- Submit resumes online. Paper and snail mail takes too long. By the time your resume arrives by mail, the position could be filled. Also, dropping off your resume in person? Creepy and needy. (One exception: If you know someone at the organization and they are willing to deliver the resume for you. Even then, I would recommend sending your contact email with the resume and asking him or her to forward it.)
- Whether it is requested or not, write a cover letter. The cover letter should be the body of your email and not an attachment. Follow Ms. Amos’s excellent advice. You might also use a T letter as your cover letter, but do send the resume. Tom Murrell describes the T letter in detail in his article Get More Interviews with a T-letter. But again, I disagree with his advice to leave out the resume. If you are instructed to send a resume, send a resume.
- Show up on time for any in-person interview. If possible, do a dry run the day before to locate the building. Or plan to arrive very early. There are worse things than sitting in a nearby coffee shop for half an hour. (Don’t chug too much coffee.)
I could go on for a long time, but frankly, these six points will lift you above 95 percent of the other applicants, and you can do the rest.
(India Amos via words / myth / ampersand & virgule)
Help understanding the new FrameMaker 9 interface
February 19th, 2009 by ScriptoriumTech
by Sheila Loring
FrameMaker 9 has been redesigned to look like Adobe’s other products — InDesign, Photoshop, etc. The new interface can be downright confounding and disappointing for long-time FrameMaker users. You’ll want a good introduction before upgrading.
RJ Vasquez, Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe, will offer a 90-minute e-learning session on FrameMaker’s interface on February 26th. For details, go to:
http://blogs.adobe.com/rjacquez/2009/02/elearning_session_on_the_new_u.html
Don’t forget to read my review of FrameMaker 9:
http://www.scriptorium.com/palimpsest/2009/02/framemaker-9-review.html
I evaluate the new interface (complete with screen shots) and features such as importing PDF comments, preserving CMYK in PDFs, new book options (section numbering, for one!), and the Adobe AIR interactive online help.
Get $10 off two Scriptorium Press titles
February 16th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
We have just lowered prices on two books in our online store:
- Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8: Get both the printed book and downloadable PDF file for $39.99: that’s $10 off the cover price of $49.99. (You can still download just the PDF version for $29.99.)
- Technical Writing 101 (second edition): Get the printed book for $25.95, which is $10 off the cover price of $35.95.
These discounts are available only through our online store. Please spread the word!
P.S. We’re also offering discounts on these titles through our listings on Amazon Marketplace:
Take our survey on structured authoring–and get a free report on the results
January 29th, 2009 by Alan Pringle
Curious about other folks’ experiences with considering, planning, and implementing a structured authoring/XML environment? Well, now is your chance to get that information by participating in our survey on structured authoring.
We want input from everyone: those who have implemented structured authoring, are planning to implement it, or have decided against it. The short survey will take no more than 10 minutes of your time. The deadline for responses is March 1, 2009.
In April, we will release our analysis of the results. If you participate in the survey and provide your contact information (which is entirely optional), we will give you a free copy of the report, which will cost $200. We are also going to give a $50 amazon.com gift certificate to two randomly selected people who provide contact information. (By the way, if you provide your contact information, we will not share that information with any other company.)
Take the survey today. We appreciate your help.
Our holiday schedule
December 23rd, 2008 by Alan Pringle
For the holidays, Scriptorium will be closed on December 24 and 25, and some of us will be out of the office until January 5.
Even though a few of us won’t be here for the rest of 2008 (and a bit of 2009!), you can still immediately download the PDF versions of workbooks, books, and white papers from our online store. (Printed versions purchased through January 4 likely won’t ship until January 5.)
Everyone here wishes you the best for holiday season. That includes my dog, Keely:
(Picture is courtesy of Camp Canine.)
Writing from the past: the Dead Sea Scrolls
October 27th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
I visited an exhibit showing some of the Dead Sea Scrolls yesterday. The ancient texts were indeed the star attraction, but there were two bits of information I found particularly interesting:
- During the excavation of Qumran (a settlement near the caves where the scrolls were discovered), inkwells were found in a room with the remains of bench-type furniture. Some believe that the room was a scriptorium where manuscripts were copied. Even though the bench could have been used much like the desks we use today, some scholars believe that such use didn’t occur until medieval times. The people using the bench may have sat on the floor with their backs to the bench. The exhibit had a reproduction of the bench and drawings of how it may have been used. (By the way, some scholars do not interpret the room as a scriptorium but as a dining room instead.)
- Those attempting to restore the works in the 1950s meant well, but the techniques they used were damaging. People handled the fragments with bare hands, smoked while working with the fragments (!), and used cellophane tape to put fragments together. Restoration efforts of today include removing the adhesive residue left by the tape.
Free books are gone
August 19th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
We’ve given away all the copies of the Technical Writing 101 book. Thanks for all the responses.
We are happy the books are going to readers instead of the recycling facility!
Yet more free copies of Technical Writing 101 (first edition)
August 19th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
As I mentioned in an update to my post yesterday, we located more copies of the first edition of Technical Writing 101. We have divided this lot into four batches, each of which has nine or ten books. If you’d like one of these batches, please contact me at books@scriptorium.com. We will ship the books to you at no charge.
Update: We have given all the books away. Thanks for your quick responses!
Free copies of Technical Writing 101 (first edition)
August 18th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
We have 27 copies of the first edition of our Technical Writing 101 book. We are no longer selling that edition, so we are giving away our remaining inventory.
To keep things simple, we have divided the books into three batches, each of which has nine books. If you’d like one of these batches, please contact me at books@scriptorium.com. We will ship the nine books to you at no charge.
Update: We have shipped all three batches. However, we think there are more copies lurking about. Stay tuned…
Interesting times…
July 15th, 2008 by Sarah O'Keefe
First, some bad news. I have decided to postpone release of our structured FrameMaker title. This decision was due to several factors, including the following:
- Disappointing sales of the unstructured FrameMaker 8 book. Frankly, based on the level of interest shown before the book was released, we expected a lot more sales at this point.
- Resource allocation. I need the people who were working on the book to focus on client projects. I suppose this is a good problem to have.
- Historically, FrameMaker has been on an 18-24 month release cycle. We’re about a year into FrameMaker 8 already, which means we’re looking at a lifespan of 6-12 months for this next book. And that’s if we made it available TODAY. And the content is not ready.
We have a similar problem with our FrameMaker training workbooks. Our original plan was to update the unstructured book content, then the structured book, and then tackle the workbooks. Thus far, we haven’t touched the workbooks to make the needed version 8 updates.
So we’ve decided to try something different, and that brings us to what I hope is the good news part of this post.
Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring). We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.
As of today, you have access to free FrameMaker tutorial content. The sample files needed to complete the exercises are included on the wiki. Furthermore, we have licensed the content under a Creative Commons license, which means that you can reuse and repurpose the content as long as you provide attribution.
We hope that you will consider registering on the wiki and contributing to the needed updates.
Meanwhile, we will continue to offer live, web-based training on FrameMaker. You can also purchase PDF and printed versions of the workbooks from our store. The commercial versions have much nicer formatting than the wiki content does. For more details about the difference between the commercial and the wiki versions, see the front page of the wiki.
I know that some of you have been looking forward to getting the structured FrameMaker book, and I apologize to you for this change in plans. I hope that you’ll find the wiki option a worthwhile substitute for the time being.
We are also looking at releasing some of the structured content (especially the DITA-specific information) as a stand-alone technical brief, but I don’t want to commit to that approach at this point.
No more DRaMa: DRM-free books
June 25th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
O’Reilly has announced it will start selling some titles as ebook bundles free of digital rights management (DRM) in July. I’m sure a lot discussion went into that decision because we have grappled with this very issue for our Scriptorium Press titles.
When we decided to release our FrameMaker workbooks in PDF format in February 2006, we opted not to use DRM restrictions that prevent printing or that lock the file to a particular computer. It was not an easy decision to make. We don’t want our materials to be pirated, but at the same time, we don’t want to implement DRM that can make life difficult for legitimate users. (What if you get a new laptop and your PDF file is locked down to your old one?) We also did a survey a few months ago on digital books, and folks made it very clear they would avoid files with DRM.
With the recent release of our Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8, we took our sales of digital books even further. For the first time, we are offering buyers the option of purchasing a new reference book as a PDF file; previously, we offered digital versions for older reference books that we no longer printed. Another change with this latest release is that buyers who get the printed version also get the PDF version free. As is the case with our other digital versions, the PDF file of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 is free of the DRM restrictions I mentioned earlier.
Releasing our content without any DRM may seem foolish to some. (“You’re too trusting!” “You’re inviting people to steal your stuff!”) That being said, DRM can be a huge hassle for people who actually paid for the material, and it also can be cracked. Those are two big reasons we have opted not to use it.
Printed version of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 now shipping
June 20th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
A delivery person is stacking boxes of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 in our back room as I type this. If you’ve ordered the printed version, your shipment will go out today or tomorrow.
Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 is now available
May 30th, 2008 by Alan Pringle
As of a few minutes ago, you can buy our latest book, Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 from our online store.
You can purchase the printed book and PDF file combination for $49.99, or you can buy just the PDF file for $29.99. You get instant access to the PDF file–available exclusively through our online store–with either option. (Printed books will be shipped in the middle of June.)
On Sunday, I’m off to the STC conference with Matt and Sarah. Hope to see some of you there.
Getting close on FrameMaker 8 books
April 29th, 2008 by Sarah O'Keefe
We have nearly finished the content updates for the new unstructured FrameMaker 8 book (Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8). That leaves proofreading, production, and indexing.
Barring any unforeseen problems (and there are always unforeseen problems), the book should be available as a PDF download in mid-May when we ship it to the printer. The printed versions will be available a few weeks later.
Highlights:
- We are offering print and PDF versions. If you purchase the print version, the PDF version is included. In addition to search and live links, the PDF version offers instant gratification (you can download it) and is free of extortionate international or express shipping charges (because you download it).
- We explain how to use the new Unicode support for text and dialog boxes.
- We updated the workflow and output chapters.
- We nipped, tucked, and generally improved the content, and hopefully did a better job than this.
- We have rewritten the conditional text chapter to cover the new complex conditionals. I believe that Terry Smith is now the only person in the world who actually understands how to use this feature.
- We refreshed screen shots.
- We corrected errors and embarrassing spelling errors. (And probably introduced some new ones. Oh well.)
Email us at books@scriptorium.com before May 9 for a 15-percent discount code on orders of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8. You will receive the code along with the announcement of availability in mid-May.
Training updates for 2008
December 19th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
As many of you know, we have been offering technical training for quite some time now. We have traveled all over the U.S. and Canada, and occasionally farther afield, to deliver classes. We have hosted students in our classroom from near and far, including Australia, Japan, and India.
In 2008, we have decided to focus on delivering our public classes as live, instructor-led, web-based classes. The majority of our students are not local, so web-based classes will eliminate the travel headaches (and costs).
We are changing our policy on minimum enrollment.
For our web-based classes, we guarantee that we will not cancel the class due to lack of enrollment. In other words, even if only one person signs up, we will still hold the class.
We hope that this gives you incentive to try out a web-based class. The cost savings are significant, especially if you are far, far away.
Scriptorium 2008 class schedules
PS We will still be offering private classroom training.
We need help. Again.
November 16th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
It’s getting to be a habit to post requests for help. Once again, we find ourselves with too many projects and not enough people. (Which is a great deal more pleasant than the opposite problem.)
This time, we are looking for help on specific projects, so we’re looking for contractors, and we will consider non-locals.
The job requirements are the usual miracle worker stuff. Here is a synopsis:
- Expert knowledge of XML, DITA, XSL, DITA-OT, and other standards-based publishing tools and technologies
- Experience implementing XML and content management
- [...]
- Available for up to 40 percent travel
If you or a friend have what it takes, jump on over to our jobs page for all the details.
Are you interested in consulting as a career?
October 5th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
We have just opened up a job posting for an entry-level Editorial Assistant. Let me warn you that this job is even less glamorous than it sounds. But if you think you might be interested in getting into implementing publishing systems, this is your chance to learn all about our business from the inside.
Update (10/15/2007): We have filled the position.
Instant gratification — FrameMaker 7 book
September 18th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Our massive FrameMaker reference, Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7, is now available for download from our shopping cart.
The download is $39.99. Site licenses are available; contact us for details.
After much discussion, screaming, blood, and tears, we have made the PDF available without DRM. Please do not share or redistribute it.
We are currently working on updates to the book for FrameMaker 8 and hope to have unstructured FrameMaker content ready before the end of the year. When you purchase the FrameMaker 7 PDF, you will receive a coupon good for $20 off the FrameMaker 8 content when it is released.
Note: Currently, our plans call for FrameMaker 8 content to be paper, not digital.
Updating our books for FrameMaker 8
August 14th, 2007 by Alan Pringle
We’ve had a few inquiries about our plans for the Publishing Fundamentals book and workbook series now that Adobe has released FrameMaker 8. We do plan to update the book and workbooks for version 8: in fact, we’ve just started work on updating Publishing Fundamentals.
After we’ve completed that update, we’ll start work on the unstructured workbooks, and then we’ll focus on the structured workbooks. We don’t have firm release dates yet, but we’ll keep you posted on our progress here in Palimpsest and in the newsletter.
Link round-up
June 14th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
I blogged during my vacation, so I suppose it’s only fair that after returning to work, I took a blogging vacation.
Here are some recent items of interest:
- Conference assessment. In his new blog, Group Wellesley Wire, Alan Houser provides capsule reviews of tech comm conferences. It’s a great overview, especially if you’re trying to find just one conference to attend this year. I would only add that tekom, in Germany, is technically the largest conference in the group (not STC). However, many of the sessions are in German, which might prove a little challenging. X-Pubs, which was just held near London, is also worth a mention.
- Indexing/taxonomy. If you have any interest in this subject, head on over to Seth Maislin’s Indexing Blog.
- Upcoming conferences. I will be at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change in Publishing conference in San Jose next week. Looking forward to a few days of conference attendance without speaker duties. This should be an interesting change of perspective. In October, I’ll be at DocTrain, and I have tentative plans for tekom/tcworld in Wiesbaden, Germany, in November.
- Global calendars. I was asked to speak at a very interesting conference in Europe this fall. Unfortunately, the conference is during the same week as the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
This made me think about calendars — we have grievous difficulty scheduling classes without running into any U.S. holidays. If we have to schedule around holidays in multiple countries, there might not be any viable days left over!
More FrameMaker 8 tidbits
May 8th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Michael Müller-Hillebrand at cap-studio.de reads the tea leaves of Adobe’s public announcements about FrameMaker 8. First, in What has Adobe promised us (German), he makes the following points:
- In a document posted in July 2006, Adobe promised a new release “in the next 12 months.”
- They refer to a “major new version,” which is code for 8.0 as opposed to 7.x.
- They recognize the lack of support for non-Western languages as a major issue.
- They will focus on structured authoring features.
Second, in a post about the beta test announcement from Adobe, he explains what makes this news so important:
- The announcement technically meets the earlier promise of a new release by July 2007.
- Adobe is adopting a more open culture, which is likely due to influence from the Macromedia merger. By announcing an upcoming release, Adobe may lose a few sales over the next couple of months, but they also freeze purchasing decisions — it’s unlikely that new customers will purchase a competitive product before they see details on the new release.
On a cautionary note, Michael points out that Adobe is unlikely to recruit a significant number of new beta testers because it requires too many resources. And meanwhile, he (and I) are waiting to see what, if any, product details are announced next week at STC (see sneak peek announcement).
PS Translations (and errors) are mine.
Neil Perlin starts blogging
May 4th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Hyper/Word Services now has a blog, which Neil Perlin (the principal) describes as “low-gibberish overviews of online help technologies and methodologies.” The world could use some of that.
But more importantly, will Neil use his blog as a venue for updates to his Guide to BBQ Restaurants?? The world is waiting.
It’s not easy being green
April 23rd, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Over the years, we’ve been quite smug about Scriptorium’s eco-friendly credentials. We don’t have any nasty, dirty factories, we mostly provide services, and all in all, we’re pretty clean.
On the surface.
It turns out, of course, that there are two major holes in our green company argument:
- energy
- air travel
On the energy front, we use power to heat and cool our office and to run our (many) computers. When we travel to visit customers, we usually fly, and airplanes emit huge amounts of pollutants.
In honor of our 10th anniversary, and for Earth Day 2007, we are announcing several new initiates to help reduce our environmental footprint:
- Recycling: We already recycle most of what we use in the office: paper, computers, aluminum, and plastic. We are also going to make a significant effort to use more recycled paper when we print, both in the office and with our print vendors.
- Air travel: Through carbonfund.org, we are purchasing carbon offsets to “zero out” the carbon emissions from our collective air travel. We are also offering our customers the option of live, instructor-led web-based classes, which eliminates travel requirements for client and customer alike.
- Energy: We have joined the North Carolina GreenPower program, which allows us to purchase energy from renewable sources.
You can find a list of carbon offsetting programs in several countries here. There’s an excellent overview of the concept at grist.org and carbonoffsets.org.
Friends in new places
April 2nd, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
We’re pleased to announce that we have joined XMetaL’s Partner Program as a Certified Service Provider.
We will not be reselling XMetaL software, but we will begin offering XMetaL classes this summer.
This is really a customer-driven decision — we have clients asking us to develop XML and DITA implementations with XMetaL as the core authoring tool.
Publishing Nightmares contest ends on March 5
March 1st, 2007 by Alan Pringle
Our Publishing Nightmares contest ends on Monday, March 5, so enter soon! Tell us about the horrors that lurk within your publishing workflow, and you might win 10 hours of free consulting.
Creative Suite 3
March 1st, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
A little public information from the Adobe Training Partners Summit. Creative Suite 3 will be officially announced on March 27.
Free (legal!) Photoshop
February 28th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Adobe has just announced that they will have an online, ad-supported, FREE version of Photoshop:
And now, a word from FrameMaker product management…
February 16th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Posted today on the Adobe TechComm blog by Aseem Dokania, FrameMaker product manager:
I have noticed discussions on some blogs and mailing lists regarding the future of FrameMaker. Let me assure you, as the Product Manager of FrameMaker, that FrameMaker is here to stay. We would do what it takes to keep FrameMaker at the leading edge of technology.
Aseem also requests feedback, and I know my readers have opinions, so get those comments going, either here or directly on his post.
Enter soon! Technical Writing 101 giveaway is next week
February 15th, 2007 by Alan Pringle
The last day to enter our drawing for a free copy of Technical Writing 101 is tomorrow: Friday, February 16.
Ten lucky winners will get a copy of the book. We’ll hold the drawing next week and will contact winners via email.
Win a free copy of Technical Writing 101
February 6th, 2007 by Alan Pringle
As part of our ongoing tenth-anniversary celebration, we’re giving away 10 copies of Technical Writing 101. For details on the giveaway, check out the February issue of Illuminations.
I often refer to Technical Writing 101 as the “little book that could.” In the summer of 2000, the book started out as a supplement for our Technical Writing 101 course. Today, it is a required textbook for many college-level tech writing classes all over the world (and for at least one high school class). We owe a great deal of thanks to those in the technical writing and academic communities for helping make the book a success.
A business built on accessibility
January 26th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
In this month’s issue of Inc. Magazine (which I read religiously), you’ll find a feature article on Anna Bradley, who runs a business called Criterion 508 Solutions. (Unfortunately, the full article isn’t available online until later this month, but you can see the abstract here.)
My interest in the article is personal — one of the Criterion contractors featured in the article is Brian Walker, who I know from his presentations on accessibility at WritersUA. Congratulations, Brian!
Web site accessibility has been in the news recently because of the Target.com lawsuit. (Target’s web site has major accessibility problems.) Ms. Bradley points out that making web sites accessible is inexpensive — certainly cheaper than litigation and horrid publicity (i.e. “Target doesn’t care about blind people”) — and furthermore, an accessible web site allows an organization to increase the number of customers that use the site. In other words, from a business standpoint, it’s pretty easy to justify spending money to ensure that more people will be able to buy things from you.
Adobe blogs get interesting
January 25th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Adobe has a lot of bloggers, posting on everything from Photoshop to LiveCycle to Lightroom to Captivate. (You can check them all out at blogs.adobe.com.)
Today, I saw an introductory post for a new blog from Vivek Jain, the Group Product Manager for FrameMaker and RoboHelp. I’m pretty sure this is the first sign of life from that group in the blogosphere.
Ten for ten: training discounts until January 31
January 12th, 2007 by Alan Pringle
In 2007, we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary at Scriptorium. As part of this milestone, we’re going to offer discounts and giveaways throughout the year.
Our first special is 10 percent off any public training class on FrameMaker, XML, XSL, InDesign, or Photoshop. To get the discount, use the following coupon code during the checkout process in our online store:
10for10training
The code is valid through January 31, so register soon! For class dates, go to our online calendar.
Fine print on the discount: You can use the discount code only one time, so if you want to take multiple classes, register for all of them in one order.
Gimme, gimme, gimme….NOW!!
January 9th, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
At Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs announces the Apple iPhone. I want one. NOW. Engadget has a blow-by-blow discussion of the keynote and lots of pictures:
Party Time!
January 2nd, 2007 by Sarah O'Keefe
Here at Scriptorium, the party is just getting started. 2007 is our tenth anniversary year, and since we’re always looking an excuse to celebrate, we plan to have an anniversary announcement every month. Or perhaps the first ten months.
Or when we get around to it.
Look for our January anniversary announcement later this week.
And if you have any suggestion on celebratory goodies for customers, please let us know in the comments.
Pre-New Year’s Resolution
December 29th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
Remember, Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7 is currently available as a secured PDF through the Adobe Document Center. Access will expire at year-end.
To access the book, click here. For access details, read Alan’s original post.
Holiday slowdown…if only!
December 18th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
Most years, we slide into the holidays gracefully. Around Thanksgiving, we are busy, but by mid-December, we’ve delivered our end-of-year projects and are beginning to kick back for the holidays.
Not this year.
I’m not sure exactly what happened, but we have several projects due in January, and there is no slowdown in sight.
(Over the years, I’ve come to count on a slow couple of weeks around the end of the year during which I can finish up some long-term planning. This year, I will apparently be going to Plan B…when I figure out what that is.)
Calling all guinea pigs
December 12th, 2006 by Alan Pringle
We are experimenting with the new Adobe Document Center, which allows us to protect PDF-based content.
Our Publishing Fundamentals: FrameMaker 7 (book information) is now available as a secured PDF. (Yep, all 878 pages of it.)
Unfortunately, you have to jump through some hoops:
- You need Acrobat Reader 7 or later.
- To access the file, you need an Adobe ID. Go to adobe.com to set up your (free) Adobe ID if you don’t have one. (In theory, you can set up the ID when you click on the file, but this is not working for us.)
- In our testing, it has taken up to 15 minutes to get the ID configured properly. Sorry…
Once you set up your Adobe ID, click on this link to open the PDF (6.5 MB):
You won’t be able to print, copy, or edit the PDF file. Access to the file will be revoked after December 31, 2006.
Please let us know what you think. Some things we are wondering about:
- Would you be interesting in purchasing our content as protected PDFs?
- Is the process too clunky?
- Would you purchase a PDF that doesn’t allow you to print (or would you pay more for a PDF that allows printing)?
- Would you want a book both in printed and PDF format (a specially priced bundle)?
The agony and the ecstasy of open source: our new calendar
November 22nd, 2006 by Alan Pringle
In addition to our redesigned front page, we are also creating a searchable calendar to make it easier to get information about upcoming classes and events. The calendar isn’t linked on our web site yet because I’m still hammering out a few things, but you can get a sneak preview. Let me know what you think (or if you have any problems with the calendar display).
After poking around the web and researching various options, I settled on using the open source PHP iCalendar. Overall, my experience has been quite positive: the amount of time it has taken to configure and customize the scripts for the calendar pales in comparison to the time it would take to set things up from scratch. I learned a thing or two (or three) about PHP scripts, so that’s good.
However, my work on the calendar has included some “learning experiences.” The documentation for PHP iCalendar is very basic and sometimes inaccurate. For example, the documentation stated that if I placed several folders of files on our web server and set permissions on those folders, I should be able to see a sample calendar. Not so. After about 30 minutes of digging around forums and researching through Google, I discovered the release I was using had a setting in the configuration file that would prevent the calendar from being displayed. Once that was fixed, I was able to see the sample calendar.
Customizing has been mostly by trial and error. Online forums for PHP iCalendar have information about some customizations, and the configuration file contains some helpful comments, but they do not take the place of solid docs.
I don’t want to go on and on about the documentation, though: if you’re going to use open source software, you really can’t complain about the documentation and support (or lack thereof) that you didn’t pay for. (But wouldn’t you know it: a few forum posts were a tad huffy. Yeah, that’s an excellent way to get support from volunteers.)
Creating the calendar and integrating it with our web site’s design hasn’t really had a lot of impact on other things here; the calendar is isolated from the other work we’re doing. However, working with the calendar shows once again how important it is to thoroughly research, plan, and test any open source solution that would have a large impact on a company’s workflow (DITA, anyone?). “Free” could be very costly without careful planning.
A fresh coat of paint for the front door, er, page
November 20th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
Finally, FINALLY we have found some time to update our web site’s front page. We simplified the layout (no more nested nested nested tables), added a live feed from our blog, and did some general housekeeping. Please let us know what you think of the new look.
For the most part, it’s standard HTML/CSS, but we did use XSL to process our blog’s RSS feed.
We are particular interested in getting feedback from those of you running non-Windows, non-Firefox, non-Internet Explorer systems.
A new calendar is also on the way. More on that later this week or next.
New York Times covers Target accessibility lawsuit
November 6th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
This is the first mention that I’ve spotted in major media (my scans of said media are pretty spotty, though).
Again, the reporting seems to break down to, “What [censored] was Target thinking?”
Most online stores go to great lengths to make sure that their sites are accessible to people with disabilities, simply because it is good business to allow as many people as possible to shop. And online-shopping technology specialists say it is not so difficult or costly a task.
About halfway through the article, it suddenly switches over to discussing accessibility in online education programs:
The issue has become critical because many online-only schools became eligible this summer to receive federal student aid. But to get such funds, organizations must adhere to regulations in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which has been updated to say that all Web sites of groups receiving federal money must be accessible to people with disabilities.
Lots of interesting new information in the article. Read the whole thing.
Is DITA right for you?
November 2nd, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
I’ve just posted a new white paper to our store.
Assessing DITA as a foundation for XML implementation
Like our other papers, it’s free. We do ask you to register to get the material.
I look forward to your comments.
I’m not alone in my obsession…
November 2nd, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
This blog features occasional digressions in ancient manuscripts, printing, and the like. So I’m delighted to find a similar tangent on words / myth / ampers & virgule:
“The Museum Plantin-Moretus (Moretus was Plantin’s son-in-law) houses the oldest extant printing press (amid several other presses that are not much newer), punches cut by Claude Garamond himself, over six hundred manuscripts dating back to the ninth century, the company’s nearly complete business archives, and other treasures that earned the museum the designation of a world heritage site.”
Yes, Garamond was a person before he was a font name.
Get heard by Adobe
November 2nd, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
[updated to strip nasty Word HTML "tags"]
I received a request from Adobe today to distribute a questionnaire:
The Product Management team at Adobe is working towards defining the future roadmap of its leading Technical Communication products.
For this purpose we are trying to collect ideas, feedback and inputs from the technical communication community. This is to request your help in tapping your network to collect some responses to the attached questionnaire. It would be very helpful for us, if you could make this questionnaire available to your clients, users and network.
It should take around 15 minutes to fill the questionnaire. The respondents can fill up either the PDF form (compatible with Adobe Reader 7) or type their responses in the MsWord document. The responses can be sent to me at aseem@adobe.com or Mahesh@adobe.com
Do you have feature requests for FrameMaker or RoboHelp? Here’s your chance to send your complaints to someone who can do something about it:
Closed captioning in online video
October 25th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
The Wall Street Journal, of all places, has a detailed article about online video and the lack of closed captioning.
Though television networks and movie studios are rapidly expanding into Internet distribution, few online videos offer the closed captioning that companies are required by law to offer to TV viewers. (link, will expire in about seven days)
Unlike TV broadcasts, closed captions are not mandatory for online video, and the major broadcasters are currently choosing not to provide them for the shows they are putting online.
As a result, online video represents a step backward for hearing-impaired viewers–it’s essentially unusable.
I expect that this loophole will be closed rather swiftly.
Project Mars — not chocolate?
October 24th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
The announcements just keep coming from Adobe today:
Mars is the code name for technology being developed by Adobe that provides an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based representation of Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. (Mars page at Adobe Labs)
In the long term, I think this means the Death of Distiller. Other than that, I think my brain has gone into information overload.
Any thoughts on where this is going?
Rethinking the periodic table of elements
October 24th, 2006 by Sarah O'Keefe
[heavy blogging. I must be trying to avoid some unpleasant task.]
Most of you probably don’t know that I spent the first two years of my college career as a chemistry major. When push came to shove, I decided that I would rather serve as editor of the science magazine than take analytical chemistry (which was notorious for an all-consuming laboratory component). And really, who could find working in Gross Chemistry Laboratory appealing? (To add insult to injury, the approach to the chemistry building was a set of steps that were completely unusable by humans, as each stair required about one-and-a-half strides. The joke on campus was that the civil engineering department had designed the stairs. “But Duke doesn’t have a civil engineering program.” “Not any more.”)
In any event, here is a fascinating new look at the periodic table, as a spiral. (h/t New York Times via Feld Thoughts)
Adding color commentary to white papers
August 22nd, 2008 by The Mighty Administrator
When Scriptorium wrote on Web 2.0 back in April, we mentioned creating HTML versions of our white papers. Those papers are now live, ready for your ratings and comments.
You can link to them below or from our white papers page.
Friend or Foe: Web 2.0 in Technical Communication
Structured Authoring and XML
Managing Implementation of Structured Authoring
Is DITA Right for You?
Integrating XML and FrameMaker
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