Re: What Editors and Tech Writers Do

[Paul Prescod <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

KAREN_LEICHEL@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> -Companies that are not large enough to segment jobs in this way can either

I don't see how this can apply to you. There is a big difference between a
company that is too small to be able to "do things right" and one that
doesn't recognize the value of its document systems. Your company makes
*tanks* right? Presumably the sale of a single tank pays the price for a
technical support person many times over.

Let me be clear on this: in my perfect world, most companies would have
its own DTDs, stylesheets, editor customizations, transformations etc.
Every company has different documentation needs. I've had no luck selling
that vision to small companies (for good reasons) so I now tell them that
buying something CLOSE to their needs is the next best thing. The bigger a
company gets, though, the more the difference between "CLOSE" and "just
right" becomes expensive. 30+ writers/translators/editors wasting an hour
a day, 250 days a year. It's expensive even at the shamefully depressed
wages of modern writers.

If you trade me a tank I'll do your DTD/XSL/DSSSL/editor
customizations...whatever. This one:
http://www.udlp.com/gsd/grizzly/griz.htm looks like it has some pretty
cool peacetime uses.

>  -b) they can buy a package of schema/transform/stylesheet/editor from a
> -vendor. 

> ...

> We tried this and it cost us a tremendous amount of money!! 

If you generate as much documentation as I would guess you generate, and
it is as complicated as I would guess it is, you've got to factor in the
costs of using tools that aren't designed with your needs in mind. 

It's just like accounting or database systems. Big companies with
complicated accounting requirements buy complicated systems and customize
the hell out of them. Small companies usually make do with QuickBooks,
even if they know that they are wasting time sometimes with stuff that
could be automated in a perfect world. I would usually put defense
contractors in the former category.

> I'd like to find a company to work for that has this luxury. The "other
> technical resources" generally resent it too.

Technical resources can be people you hire. You are absolutely right that
most IS departments are not much help.

> -The only reliable path is b). This is, therefore what I advocate for small
> -companies.
> 
> Thanks very much for the advice!! I am not being facetious. I will take your
> e-mail (without my comments, of course) to the powers that be here.

Don't forget to tell them about my offer! One grizzly. That's all I need.
I'll give you stylesheets and DTDs for life.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

"Like most religious texts, the XML 1.0 spec has proven itself 
internally-inconsistent, so we're going to have to invent some kind of 
exegetical method now to show how it's really all an allegory." - Anon


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list