"Oh... one more. If you're looking at a MacBook Air, there's a rumor that they'll be refreshing the line to new ivy bridge processors and higher res displays. If history is a guide, this should happen in October, after all the back to…"
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Richard S.'s Discussions
Contemporary Web-based doc styles you like
Started this discussion. Last reply by Sarah Maddox Mar 1. 10 Replies 2 Likes
Hi all, Can you point to some online examples of doc style you really like. We are re-doing some of our partner-facing web tools, and there are opportunities to make our doc presentation better, and…Continue
Do you hire Programmer/Writers
Started this discussion. Last reply by Daniel Archer Sep 30, 2011. 8 Replies 1 Like
Do you hire Programmer/Writers? If so, how do you find them? I'm currently recruiting, and we're not getting good candidate flow. In discussing this with my team the other day, we're beginning to…Continue
Document code or APIs? Check out "Meld"
Started Apr 25, 2011 0 Replies 1 Like
http://meld.sourceforge.net It's a graphical diff/merge tool that is just plain awesome. As a tech writer, I often have to write about what's changed…Continue
Richard S.'s Page
Latest Activity
Richard S. replied to Elisabeth W.'s discussion Hardware question"If you like Mac, go ahead and get one, but it's a good bet that as a freelancer that you'll need a PC too. A reasonable option for most things is a Windows VM running on the Mac. Most apps tend to work well in a VM, but some famously…"
Richard S. replied to Elisabeth W.'s discussion Hardware question"Which is preferred is largely up to the individual. Which is permitted is largely up to the organization. Some organizations let individuals make a choice on what hardware they prefer, others don't. Others still will require that you have…"
Richard S. replied to Daniel Berman's discussion Software Online Help"It sounds like you've adopted DITA in some way, and that you are trying to make your outline a hybrid that includes vestiges of the print world (ie XYZ Guide), and literal usages of DITA type names. Given that it's online, the…"
Richard S. replied to Linda Cast's discussion authoring in Doxygen (not generated content)"You can do this with Doxygen; although there's virtually nothing gained by doing it this way. Think of it this way, you write some doxygen markup in input files. Then you run doxygen, which parses your input files and generates output files of…"
Richard S. replied to Andrew Eccles's discussion Best Help Authoring Tool (HAT) for Mac OS X?"Given your needs, a wiki probably isn't your best choice. They don't necessarily excel at those things you desire most, and the one thing they do excel at (ease of collaboration from a variety of non-trained folks) isn't on your…"
Richard S. commented on Daniel Archer's blog post Technical Writing Capabilities and Offerings - for internal customers"If you'll pardon my saying so... imposing typical business practices in government agencies can be a challenge all on its own. Agendas are rarely obvious, and it's a mistake to assume that typical business goals like reducing…"
Richard S. replied to Cayenne Woods's discussion cms, wiki tools"Are you talking structure in the sense of structured authoring? If so, my sense is that a wiki is a bad choice. They don't support that sort of thing well IMO. I'm sure some folks do it, but I'm unconvinced it's the right tool…"
Richard S. replied to Fiver Moffet's discussion What do you use XML for?"Authoring in an XML format is probably among the most common for technical writers. I've done it myself, though not all that much. There are many tools that you'll hear of that are "more friendly" front ends, or tool wrappers…"
Richard S. replied to Chris Voxland's discussion DITA in the San Francisco area"There's a local DITA user's group. I think it's called SVDIG (http://svdig.ditamap.com/).
I met up with them a few times at NetApp and VMWare. I remember than Salesforce.com had a bunch of regulars in the group, and they are in…"
Richard S. replied to Patty Blount's discussion Agile & Single Sourcing?">> I think the solution should be branching.
I was tempted to chime in and say the same thing, but since I know squat about AuthorIT, I stayed quiet. At the end of the day though, this is exactly what the dev team is doing to manage the…"
Richard S. replied to Sharon O'Neill's discussion Developing online help in Unix"The fuse documents are done with DocBook. There's no reason why that shouldn't be an option. Developers have been using it for docs for years. Same with LaTeX, but I'll say two things you don't ordinarily hear in conjunction with…"
Richard S. replied to Tim Larsen's discussion New to the field- Best software for what Im doing?"Alternatives...
Excel? Things like dropdowns, columns, and input validation are a cinch in Excel. You might need a little bit of VBA to make it the input validation work the way you want while someone is typing, but it's pretty…"
Richard S. replied to Tim Larsen's discussion New to the field- Best software for what Im doing?"There probably is no "best" answer without knowing more about skills and budget (both money and calendar), but since you want input constraints and validation, a custom web form might be the simplest way to go.
The advantages…"
Richard S. replied to Chastin Howerton's discussion Wiki Newbie - Need Help Getting Started and Staying Organized"In HTML, an image is a reference. To oversimplify, the HTML that a wiki generates says something like Hey web browser, display the image file "foobar.png" on this page using the following properties . The properties are instructions…"
Richard S. replied to Chastin Howerton's discussion Wiki Newbie - Need Help Getting Started and Staying Organized"Do you know which wiki you plan to you, or are you still scoping this? Confluence has a pretty decent explanation of search weighting, and page title is a big part of it. It's worth reading how whichever tool you choose deals with search…"
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