Design isn’t free
The mantra of XML is that you separate content from formatting. Authors do content; formatting happens later. During a panel discussion at last week’s (excellent) UA Europe conference, I realized that this is only half the story.
The mantra of XML is that you separate content from formatting. Authors do content; formatting happens later. During a panel discussion at last week’s (excellent) UA Europe conference, I realized that this is only half the story.
In reality, collaborative authoring is little more than a euphemism for the idea that “anyone can write.”
That’s Tom Johnson’s take on collaborative authoring in his latest blog post. The writer in me sympathizes deeply because the “anyone can write” attitude is a direct challenge to the careers of professional writers.
For remote work, file management in the cloud is way easy. Other methods, not so much…
When I started at Scriptorium a year ago, I knew almost nothing about tech comm. I knew what technical content was, having used it many times, but I’d never really thought about how it was produced.
In this webcast recording, George Bina shows you how to create DITA content from zero to a full deliverable using oXygen. The full deliverable leads to multiple publishing formats.
The batch publishing paradigm is deeply ingrained in technical communication, and breaking out of it is going to make the transition from desktop publishing to structured authoring look easy.
It can be a mightily sucktacular experience when you discover what other people think technical communicators do.
In this video recording, guest presenter Sarah Maddox explains why collaboration is a good thing, why a wiki is a good solution for it, and how to do it on Confluence.