Scriptorium Publishing

content strategy for technical communication

Blog: Opinion

The politics of DITA

March 6, 2013 by

Deciding on a content model is a critical step in many of our projects. Should it be DITA or something else? The answer, it seems, often has more to do with our client’s corporate culture than with actual technical requirements.

DITA adoption in Germany

Mardi Gras beads

Adoption of DITA in the German market is much lower than in the North American market. Some interesting factors are at play here:

  • A lot of German tech comm is heavy machinery, which is governed by the European Union’s machinery directive. A lot of North American tech comm is software, which is governed by, well, nothing.
  • Many German companies standardized their tech comm efforts a long time ago and view DITA as a half-baked newbie.
  • The German market is full of (relatively) inexpensive content management systems, most of which use proprietary content models. CMS evaluation in Germany is often driven by workflow and not content models.
  • There is at least a touch of Not Invented Here syndrome.
  • Overall, German tech comm is more concerned than North American tech comm about localization and less concerned about non-PDF deliverables.

The lure of custom XML

2009 04 19 - 4703 - Washington DC - Natural History Museum - Mackay Emerald and Diamond Necklace

Building a custom content model is appealing to some clients. They are typically found in industries that demand precision (that is, rarely software but rather medical devices or other regulated industries) and have staff with a high degree of technical expertise. The interest in custom XML rests on the following assumptions:

  • Their content is special and no mere standard can support it. (This belief is almost always incorrect except for their metadata requirements.)
  • Implementing custom XML will make the transition easier for the content creators, who are highly qualified in the subject matter (such as nuclear power plants) that they write about but not comfortable learning new publishing technology.
  • Using custom XML makes it possible to clone the existing (implicit) structure onto a content model, thus neatly avoiding change management issues. (Highly unlikely.)

There is also a strong correlation between custom XML advocates and FrameMaker aficionados. The thinking seems to be that a transition from unstructured FrameMaker to structured FrameMaker is easier than moving to a non-FrameMaker XML editor. (As if!) And since structured FrameMaker can happily support custom XML, then why not use it?

Data interchange

Pearls

DITA is or was billed as a way to exchange content. For data interchange, however, we find that DITA is not compelling. We have worked with several customers who had a data source (usually a database) and needed to extract data, format it, and align it with additional information from elsewhere. There are two basic options to attack this problem:

  1. Database to XML, XML to publishing tool, integrate with additional content in publishing tool
  2. Database to XML, XML to DITA, integrate with additional content in DITA, DITA to publishing tool

Most customers chose option 1. The advantages of integration in the DITA layer are not compelling enough to justify the investment required to build the database to DITA configuration system.

This is the outlier case where technical considerations drove the decision.

Technology risk

DITA (and XML) are perceived as much riskier than publishing or help authoring tools. The argument here is “What if Key Technical Person leaves? Nobody else would be able to maintain the DITA system.”

Does DITA offer compelling benefits? If so, why would an organization allow a single person to be the only expert on this technology?

We refer to this as the Bus Problem. The success or failure of your system should never be dependent on a single person. What if that person gets hit by a bus? (Or leaves the organization? Or retires? Or joins the witness protection program??)

If you have only one person who is capable of understanding the intricacies of a DITA implementation and no possibility of hiring or training more people, then you have a serious problem. It’s not just a DITA problem, though.

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Five questions to ask before distributing content as HTML

February 19, 2013 by

HTML5! Mobile! Responsive design!

It’s easy to get distracted by sparkly buzzwords when you investigate distributing your technical content as HTML. Instead, focus on a few basic but essential questions:

flickr: woodleywonderworks

(flickr: woodleywonderworks)

1. Are there are corporate standards for web page design?

If your company already publishes web content, it’s likely there are guidelines for how HTML content should be coded. Get those guidelines, review them, and use them during your design phase. Those of us in tech comm are accustomed to following style guides, right?

2. What are the primary browsers used by those consuming information?

Your company’s web team can tell you which browsers your company’s site is primarily supporting. (In a perfect world, company web sites would work flawlessly across all browsers, but reality has other ideas.) Don’t assume your readers will use your personal browser of choice, and some of them may work in an environment with locked-down machines and slow software upgrades. You may have no use for Internet Explorer 7, but maybe your readers aren’t so lucky.

Consider the abilities and limitations of users’ primary browsers while developing your specs for HTML, but your design (and eventual testing of HTML content) should extend to other browsers as well.

There’s a lot of chatter about delivering web content to mobile devices these days. Your existing web infrastructure (assuming there is one) may not support mobile display, and such support may not be coming any time soon. Also, those neat-o features of HTML5 you read about may not work in an older browser you need to support.

3. Is a search engine already integrated into the web site? Can new content be integrated into it?

If there is a search engine in place, find out if you can use it for your content. Also, will it allow users to search just the technical content and to search across all company information? Strong search capability is critical to the usefulness of your web content. Without search, your web content will provide only a fraction of the value that it could—be prepared to license and implement a search engine.

4. How should repeated elements, such as navigation bars, the company logo, and footers, be implemented?

To keep file sizes down, one common technique is to link in repeated elements (such as a navigation bar) so that it’s not actually stored in every web page. Your design should conform to the established approach.

In some cases, your web team needs HTML fragments without root tagging (such as the top-level <html> element) because they will wrap your content to add the root tags, references to the navigation bar, and so on.

5. Do you have web-ready images?

If you’ve been cranking out printed books and PDF files, your illustrations, screen shots, and so on, may not be in formats that web browsers understand (PNG, JPEG, and GIF, for example). You’ll need to develop strategies for converting images and including web-ready versions.

 

There are many other considerations when you’re distributing technical content as HTML; my list certainly isn’t exhaustive. Please share your own wisdom in the comments below. Horror stories are always welcome!

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Adapt or die: Managing increasing content velocity

February 12, 2013 by

Content velocity is the speed at which we create and produce content, the speed of the publishing process itself, and the speed of change in content requirements—what we need to produce and the delivery mechanisms.

This is a summary of a presentation delivered at the Intelligent Content Conference on February 8, 2013, in San Francisco.

We must adapt to changes (Image: NASA)

It’s not as though publishing has been trivial until now. Surviving and thriving as a content creator has always been difficult. But now, the environment is changing drastically.

We must adapt, even though we are not sure what we need to survive in the new environment. The asteroid—digital publishing—has hit us. We are seeing changes already, but are these temporary or permanent? What are the most profound changes? By comparison, the initial asteroid impact would have caused a huge shock wave, tsunamis, and other immediate disasters. But it was the dust thrown into the atmosphere that caused climate change and wiped out the dinosaurs.*

The impact of digital publishing is that content creators must stop operating as a cottage industry or in an artisanal bubble. We no longer have a margin for error in this new world.

Ostrich (Female)There are dinosaur descendants in today’s world, but they look completely different than their ancestors.

What are the implications for us after the arrival of digital publishing? How do we climb out of the crater and deal with the new landscape?

One key is velocity. Publishing speed is increasing in every content dimension. Most publishing systems are ill-equipped for flexible, fast, and changeable requirements. They are equipped to support a manufacturing process, not a digital process.

Authoring velocity

A requirement for faster authoring means that collaborative authoring will become the norm. A modular, collaborative approach, along with controlled language and terminology, speeds up authoring at the expense of individual voices. To make authoring faster, publishing and formatting responsibility will be taken away from authors.

Editing velocity

Software will take on some of the traditional human editor responsibilities; particularly, enforcement of required content structure and controlled language. The conformance edit will largely move into the authoring phase.

Production and distribution velocity

The process of production editing—putting the final polish on a specific output format—will disappear for almost all content. Instead, we will speed up the velocity of content production with automated formatting.

For online content, the friction of distribution is eliminated. This is not exactly new information. But most workflows, especially in technical communication, are still built on the assumption that print or maybe PDF is the most critical business driver. Creating a physical book takes time, so delays in content creation are acceptable. But now, creating the “artifact”—the actual thing that people can read—doesn’t take any time. Blog posts are distributed in a split second. That means we can’t hide behind the inefficiencies of the distribution process any more.

If you have done traditional book publishing, you probably remember these phrases:

  • Bluelines
  • Galleys
  • AAs — no, not AA, but author’s alterations
  • Film plates
  • Stripping
  • Page signatures
  • Old type

They used to be necessary to produce a book; now they are headed for historical status.

Localization velocity

Translation delays should be measured in days, not weeks. To achieve this, reuse of translated content is critical. Other factors that help increase translation velocity:

  • Reuse in source files
  • Machine translation
  • Translation memory
  • Terminology management and controlled language

Velocity of new ideas
Right now, we’re all talking Kindle and EPUB production, along with mobile strategies. But what’s next?

Intelligent content, meaning information integrated with the product. We have this in software as context-sensitive help; now think about the equivalent in hardware. Your refrigerator’s light bulb burns out, so you get a notice on the fridge screen, along with instructions on how to swap out the light bulb.

In version 2, the fridge orders its own light bulb from amazon.

In version 3, the light bulb is printed on your in-house 3D printer and delivered to the fridge by your house robot.

In version 4, who knows??

We don’t know what’s coming, but we do know that we must shred the veil that separates information, data, and products. That’s what intelligent content is all about. And when we free content from its physical bindings, we can start to see the real potential of the information age.

Digital is the technology.

Velocity is the requirement.

Intelligent content helps us solve the velocity problem by making the content itself richer and by making it possible to connect the content with the product.

* At least, that’s the best current scientific theory. None of us actually observed the event directly.

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Adapt or die: style guide edition

January 29, 2013 by

Being cognizant of your environment and adapting accordingly is a good survival technique for any being (as Darwin recognized), and it’s particularly true in the professional world. And that’s why I’m puzzled by how much time tech writers spend agonizing over style and word choices in tech comm forums, on Twitter, and elsewhere.

flickr: OpenSkyMedia

Don’t hit the wall of unproductivity by arguing style points (flickr: OpenSkyMedia)

I am an English major with a background in a journalism.  I am a fan of precise, well-written content of any kind, and I can nitpick over wording with the best of them. (Just ask Sarah O’Keefe or anyone else who has asked me to review content.) But as Tom Johnson and Scott Abel have pointed out, a singular focus on style issues in tech comm does not cut it these days. (If you’re writing fiction on your own time, have at it!)

A style guide is basically a compendium of choices that foster consistent content. If there isn’t a style guide in place, implement one with a minimum of fuss and quickly move on to actually implementing those guidelines in your content. The goal is to create consistency, not agreement among writers on every single point.

If you start a new job and don’t like a decision in a style guide, join the club and suck it up (unless you have a truly compelling argument). Every time a style decision is renegotiated, that’s precious time wasted when our jobs require increasing speed in both the creation and distribution of content.

Harness your concern about precise language in a productive way that will save your employer time and money. For example, if your content is localized, using terminology consistently will reduce your localization costs (and offer all readers of your content a unified experience). Come up with a list of approved terminology, apply it to your source content,  and work with your localization vendor to ensure it’s implemented in translated content. If you’re cranking out a lot of content, look into software that can enforce consistent terminology, style rules, and so on.

Style guidelines should save time and money. Arguing over every rule in a style guide does not.

P.S. Yes, I borrowed the headline from Sarah O’Keefe’s upcoming presentation, Adapt or Die: Managing Increasing Content Velocity, at the Intelligent Content Conference next week. Sarah and I will be at Scriptorum’s booth, so drop by for a chat and some chocolate!

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Counterfactual ExtendScript history

January 22, 2013 by

In the late ’50s, my mom worked for the library at a large Canadian university. One day the library received an official letter from the U.S.S.R. asking the library to please return the Soviet Union’s encyclopedia for “revisions.”

How nice to be able to change history! At times I’ve needed to change my ExtendScript history in FrameMaker.

When you run an ExtendScript in FrameMaker, the name of the script is added to the Script > History list. I find the History a useful place to quickly run an ExtendScript a number of times, without going to the trouble of registering it.

However, I discovered that if you rename a folder or change a path to the script, there is no way to remove the script from the History. If you then run the correct script from its new location, the History list will then contain two entries–both named the same. Because the History list only displays the file name, the two entries are indistinguishable.

If you run a number of different scripts, the misdirected script entry will eventually drop off the list, but there’s no way to explicitly remove a script.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I figured out how to remove an entry from the Script > History menu.

The History is stored in the SCRIPTING.cfg file, which lives in your User Account Preferences for FrameMaker.

I always like to share clever Windows file system tricks. Here’s one that will get you quickly to your User Account Preferences: open Windows Explorer, replace the current contents of the address bar with %appdata%, and press ENTER. Voilà! Now navigate down to Adobe\FrameMaker\11 (or \10 if you haven’t upgraded).

Before going any further, make sure FrameMaker isn’t running. If you edit SCRIPTING.cfg, then close FrameMaker, your changes will be ignored.

Edit SCRIPTING.cfg in a text editor (Notepad, TextPad, PSPad, Notepad++, Vim, emacs, whatever). Under <HISTORY>, delete the offending line. You can even edit the <HISTORY> contents if you’re feeling frisky. Save the file and close it.

Now when you reopen FrameMaker, the Script > History menu reflects your changes.

It’s not just counterfactual history; you’ve changed history!

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2013 predictions in technical communication

January 17, 2013 by

Here we go again! My traditional blog topic to kick off a new year: predictions.

Last year, we predicted the following:

  • The rise of cloud-based tech comm
  • Convergence (of tech comm) with UX driven by mobile requirements
  • Divergent strategies for tool vendors (either, “oooh, shiny” or a strict focus on automation)

In 2012, I saw a good bit of discussion about Author-it’s cloud solution, but it was easyDITA that seemed to make some actual inroads in this space. Several tools that are cloud-based but not targeted specifically at tech comm, such as Drupal and WordPress, are being employed for tech comm work.

It may still be too early for the UX/tech comm convergence, but there are at least a few people thinking about this issue.

I’ll let you decide how accurate the third prediction is.

Onward to 2013. Here are my trends/predictions from this year’s webcast:

Velocity

Cheetah

I will have much more to say about this in a presentation at the Intelligent Content Conference on February 7 and 8. Executive summary: The requirement for faster authoring, formatting, publishing, delivery, and updates is forcing tech comm into significant changes.

Mobile requirements change tech comm

Monarch emerging

Lots of people are talking about this, but I can’t ignore mobile just because it’s popular. The explosion of mobile devices means that tech comm needs to focus less on PDF and more on HTML5, apps, integrated help, and thinking strategically about how content is consumed on a small(er) screen that people carry around with them.

Rethinking content delivery

pinky
This trend is related to the others. We need more targeted delivery of content to support end users so that they are not overwhelmed. Generally, we are shipping faster, in more languages, and for more devices and formats. Now, we have to address the question of how to ensure that the end user gets the right information and not just a lot of information.

(Our guest, Bill Swallow, had a different set: PDF continues to thrive, mobile drives changes, and continued growth of localization requirements. I think we agree on two out of three.)

The webcast recording should be available shortly. What are your thoughts on 2013 trends?

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Favorite FrameMaker things, part 4: eye-popping features of version 11 and integration with TCS

January 11, 2013 by

In my previous posts on my favorite FrameMaker things (“brown paper packages tied up in string”), I covered the new and old features that helped me update Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11.

I haven’t yet mentioned some of the most eye-popping new features of FrameMaker 11. If you’d like more information about them, see the videos and Reviewer’s Guide at Adobe’s FrameMaker product page (Golly, that narrator’s got a great voice ;) .) The multimedia and 3D features are quite slick, DITA support is greatly improved and more intuitive, and structure view improvements are now on par with what many of us wanted many, many moons ago! (filed under “Better late than never!”)

I also appreciate the improvements to the TCS integration with RoboHelp and Captivate. With each release, the linking gets better, but for my money, not quite enough! The available formats also follow along nicely, with the latest version outputting both Kindle and HTML5. Now if only I can track down those niggling EPUB errors… Ah well, hope springs eternal, and I look forward to the release of a FrameMaker 12, where I dream of numbered lists that number, CSS that doesn’t require a web developer, and EPUB via RoboHelp that passes the absolute strictest of standards out of the box.

Of course that all reminds me of the end of Maria’s song from The Sound of Music:

When the dog bites, when the bee stings
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember
my favorite things
and then I don’t feeel so bad!

Scriptorium’s Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11 is slated for release in January 2013. It will be available in print through online bookstores and in EPUB format from Scriptorium’s online store.

Matt Sullivan trains individuals and groups on the applications that make up the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. He is certified as an Adobe Certified Instructor in all applications that are in the suite.
You can reach him on Twitter (@mattrsullivan) or by email (matt@mattrsullivan.com).

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Favorite FrameMaker things, part 3: cross-referencing, numbering, and templates

January 4, 2013 by

This third installment of my favorite FrameMaker things (“bright copper kettles and warm woolen mitten”) covers the sturdy, tried-and-true features of FrameMaker 11 that helped me write Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11.

These features may lack the übercool video-enabled 3D HTML5 zing of some of the new stuff, but they are essential nevertheless.

Cross-referencing and numbering

A book with this much related content would be impossible to maintain without the bulletproof cross-reference and autonumbering capability that we’re used to in FrameMaker. To me it’s a bit like my garbage disposal: I really don’t give it much thought until it’s not there. For this project, numbering and cross-reference formats were obviously already in place, so there was a minimum of modification to paragraph styles and xref formats needed. The changes that were made were handled from a single chapter template and then imported across the book. Which brings me to my next comfy, cozy topic…

Template-based workflow

In my eyes, a FrameMaker chapter template is most like the blanket my daughter had when she was young. It keeps me safe and warm, and I can always rely on it to protect me from all harm! With something like 30 separate chapters (plus appendices), a chapter template is the only way to maintain sanity…err, consistency! When explaining the things that I keep in my chapter template, I simply refer to the items at File > Import > Formats. Simply put, things I can import from another Frame file are the things that make up a template. I have imported updated definitions into these chapters countless times, and will probably import them again another 5 or 6 times as subtle formatting issues arise in the final production process.

Import Formats

Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11 is slated for release in January 2013. It will be available in print through online bookstores and in EPUB format from Scriptorium’s online store.

Matt Sullivan trains individuals and groups on the applications that make up the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. He is certified as an Adobe Certified Instructor in all applications that are in the suite.
You can reach him on Twitter (@mattrsullivan) or by email (matt@mattrsullivan.com).
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Favorite FrameMaker things, part 2: screen shots, object styles, and PDF commenting

December 27, 2012 by

In this “whiskers on kittens” installment of a few of my favorite FrameMaker things, find out how I updated screenshots, handled review comments, and worked with other FrameMaker features to update Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11.

Screen shots

The biggest issue in updating an application with a major interface change is in handling the screen shots. The two things that kept me moving along were the new Object Styles and a solid screen capture utility. For screen captures I used RoboScreenCapture, which is included with FrameMaker 11 and the Technical Communication Suite.

The screen captures themselves were easy to take. Along with Print Screen and Alt-Print Screen (used to invoke Print Active Window), I used the Ctrl-Alt-W to auto-capture portions of windows, Ctrl-Alt-R to capture regions, and Ctrl-Alt-B to capture buttons and controls. Because it was so easy to snap the windows and buttons, I was able to use them more often in this version of the book. In fact, I kept a table of the buttons I used in my template so that I could quickly select and paste buttons with surrounding parentheses into the body of the document.

Table of buttons

One of the coolest things about this book update, though, was the way I could rearrange the graphics using object styles, which are new in FrameMaker 11. Object styles let you save one or more formatting properties for graphics and frames and apply those properties as needed. Best of all, the styles work well when using the As Is property, allowing me to create only a few styles to rapidly whip the graphic frames (where I used them most heavily) into shape.

Object styles

The improved handling options let me experiment with pagination, and resulted in graphics that sat beside the descriptive text (using Run Into Paragraph), rather than primarily using the Below Current Baseline option. As a result, the page count dropped significantly…saving about 100 pages per printed copy compared to the previous edition’s formatting. Reducing the page count while increasing the usability will be good all the way ’round. (Unfortunately, formatting options are much more limited in EPUB, so the graphics there will revert to the Below Current Baseline setting.)

PDF commenting

I’m currently working with a group of wonderful folks on the edits to the final copy of the book. Their eagle eyes and phenomenal FrameMaker pedigrees have reinforced my belief that I was never destined to be a proofreader. The review of the book is being done via PDF, hosted (for free) on acrobat.com. Just a few days after posting the PDF and sending invites, I’ve received over 200 individual comments, which I can import back into FrameMaker, where I use the much-improved Track Text Edits toolbar to locate and accept/reject specific comments.

Track text edits

That approach easily triples my productivity versus looking at the edits in PDF and transcribing them into the FrameMaker source content.

Editing PDF via Illustrator CS6

Of course you knew you can edit PDF with Illustrator, right?? With FM11, I can right-click on a vector graphic, and edit a temp file directly in Illustrator. Not only is this convenient, it means that I don’t have to go wading through directories looking for a specific graphic, and verifying that it is the right file. Illustrator CS6 is included in TCS4 instead of Photoshop. I think that was a good idea, but I know more than a few who disagree. More things to discuss over a cold beverage, I suppose…

Shortcuts for conditional text

Certainly not one of the smoothest of feature implementations, the Conditional Text panel requires a lot of extra clicks and effort over the “old” method. Although not a new feature, in editing the FM11 book, I was reminded of the conditional text shortcuts (Ctrl-4, 5, and 6) which bring up the Smart Insert dialog, allowing easy keyboard entry for adding and removing conditional tags (Ctrl-4 and 5, respectively) and removing all conditions (Ctrl-6). In fact, Smart Insert is pretty cool all the way around.

Smart insert

There are a smattering of keys in both structured and unstructured FrameMaker that bring up the Smart Insert option at your insertion point. There seems to be a delay upon first activation (for example, press F9 or Ctrl-9 to invoke Smart Insert for assigning a paragraph style, and you may have to wait a second or two for the feature to display). Sometimes I have to try the first few letters again to get the proper tag, but all-in-all the feature works well, and is a welcome change to the previous functionality that displayed (maybe, if you were lucky…) in the lower left corner of the document or structure view windows.

Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11 is slated for release in January 2013. It will be available in print through online bookstores and in EPUB format from Scriptorium’s online store.

Matt Sullivan trains individuals and groups on the applications that make up the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. He is certified as an Adobe Certified Instructor in all applications that are in the suite.
You can reach him on Twitter (@mattrsullivan) or by email (matt@mattrsullivan.com).
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Favorite FrameMaker things, part 1: FrameMaker 11 book update

December 20, 2012 by

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens


Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things

-as sung by Maria in The Sound of Music

So here I sit, finishing the updating and editing of Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11. Being deep into this year’s holiday season, floating between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’ve been reflecting on how much has changed this year, and certainly how much has changed since Scriptorium’s FrameMaker 8 book came out.

When FrameMaker 9 came out, complete with an updated UI, there were those who welcomed it (me) and those who welcomed it not-so-much (my coauthor Sarah O’Keefe). It was a big change, but I appreciated the migration toward all the other Adobe tools I’ve used since 1989. Certainly, a change of that magnitude is accompanied by growing pains, and many have documented them in the release of both FM9 and 10. But Scriptorium’s Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 8 hasn’t been updated since May 2008 for several reasons.

I mentioned to Sarah earlier this year that I planned on authoring a FrameMaker 11 book, and in short order, we were discussing a co-author/update on her book.  I’m happy how it is turning out, and look forward to the release of the book, slated for January. Sign up to get the latest updates on the book (and some special offers). Publishing Fundamentals: Unstructured FrameMaker 11 will be available in print through online booksellers and in EPUB format from Scriptorium’s online store.

I’ve enjoyed reworking this material, for as much as FrameMaker’s interface has changed (apart from the Standard Templates dialog, I don’t think there’s a single screen shot remained from that FM8 version), FrameMaker’s core functionality has remained the same. I can use the Frame Technologies sample files (still included with v11) to illustrate most features in v11, though they are far from a master class in best practices!!!

While writing, I found much in the existing FM8 book in the form of little-documented features that have improved my use of the product. No small feat for someone who’s been teaching and supporting FrameMaker since the release of 5.1 in the 90s. A heartfelt thanks to Sarah, both for curating such a wealth of information, and for entrusting it to me.

In the coming weeks, I’ll present a series of posts that explain my favorite FrameMaker features, both old and new, that I used to update the book.

P.S. If you’re not yet using v11, I recommend it. For advice on getting the best deals on Adobe purchases, see my post on Strategies for Purchasing Adobe Software.

Matt Sullivan trains individuals and groups on the applications that make up the Adobe Technical Communication Suite. He is certified as an Adobe Certified Instructor in all applications that are in the suite.
You can reach him on Twitter (@mattrsullivan) or by email (matt@mattrsullivan.com).

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