Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf Ltd has started the “I’m a Tech Writer” project. From the website: “Technical Writers (aka Technical Authors, Content Wranglers and Documentation Managers) have an unfair image. This project aims to challenge this image, by showing technical writers in a different light. The photos below are of technical communications professionals, doing a variety of activities.”
Over 40 pictures have been uploaded so far. (Great shots, too!) As a general rules, technical communicators are considered introverts, but as these pictures show, we have lots of interests. And we really like to travel!
Visit the I’m a Tech Writer project and submit your picture today!
MadCap Software has announced free webinars for next year for anyone who is interested. Most of the webinars are tools-independent:
- Sharon Burton will present Topic-based Authoring: Doing more with less on 15 June.
- Sarah O’Keefe will present DITA 101—Why the Buzz? on 5 February.
- Bonni Graham will present Moving to Topic-based Authoring: Making the Business Case on 12 February.
- Eddie VanArdell will present Planning for Content Reuse: Best Practices for Legacy and New Content on 24 February.
- Neil Perlin will present Can your HAT be a Content Management System? on 12 March.
In addition, Mike Hamilton will present Advanced Publishing Techniques in Flare V4 or Blaze V1 on 29 January.
All webinars take place at 9 am Pacific Time. Use the World Clock Meeting Planner to add the webinar to your schedule. (Be sure to register first!)
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released the working draft dated 24 November 2008 of the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG 2.0). Because it is a working draft, it does not succeed ATAG 1.0.
This working draft specifies the guidelines for authoring tools that want to be more accessible and includes several changes to ATAG 1.0. “An authoring tool that conforms to these guidelines will promote accessibility by providing an accessible user interface to authors with disabilities as well as enabling, supporting, and promoting the production of accessible Web content by all authors.” Their definition of “authoring tool” includes those that are used to edit HTML (such as Dreamweaver or Notepad) and those that are used to publish to HTML (such as Microsoft Word), in addition to the authoring tools listed on HAT-Matrix.com, plus more (such as whiteboards and chat programs).
Comments on this draft are due by 6 January 2009.
The HAT-Matrix Conference Calendar has been updated and now includes:
- Intelligent Content 2009 (next January in Palm Springs, CA)
- Web Content 2009 (next February in Clearwater Beach, FL)
- SXSW (next March in Austin, TX)
- DocTrain West (next March in Palm Springs, CA)
- WritersUA (next March/April in Seattle, WA)
- STC’s Technical Communication Summit (next May in Atlanta, GA)
Let us know if there are any others that should be added!
Have you visited the ComponentOne website lately? They’ve been busy working on three different products, all available now:
- Doc-To-Help 2009. The latest release includes an XML-based editor, intuitive interface. industry-standard code, and style editor. And Visual Studio users can take advantage of DynamicHelp, which uses drag-and-drop to add a Help pane to the application interface. You definitely need to take a look at this if you are creating embedded Help.
- DemoWorks 2009. Create videos in WMV, Flash, animated GIF, executables, and more.
- FrontLine 2008. Do you need to create a Knowledge Base for your users? Check out FrontLine, which provides a searchable portal, web-based administration, and knowledge management interface. You can build your repository by creating new documents, importing existing documents, or referencing websites. (Note: IIS server is required.)
Also, when you get a chance, check out the ComponentOne blogs. Use the tag cloud at the upper right to see the appropriate entries. (Your programmers may want to check them out, too.)
We’ve just finished updating HAT-Matrix.com with the latest features added to Author-it 5.1.
Let us know if you think we missed something for Author-it 5.1 or for any other application.
If you use Twitter, follow @helpstuff, which has been set up as a broadcast account. (That is, it only sends posts relevant to Gridlines, helpstuff, and HAT-Matrix.)
If you don’t use Twitter but don’t want to miss out, go to the helpstuff Twitter page. Or you can add the RSS feed from that page to your RSS reader.
If you have any news related to Help authoring, online documentation, new tool features, and so on, feel free to send an email to Gridlines News.
Wondering when the next conference is? Or what conflicts you might run into while planning? Gridlines now includes a Conference Calendar page (from Google) to help you plan!
Conference organizers are welcome to submit additions to the calendar by sending an email to calendar at hatmatrix.com. Your event will get added within a reasonable time frame. (And if we figure out a safe way to let people auto-add events to the calendar without opening it up to spammers, we’ll implement it!)
Technical communicators and Help authors from across the country gathered at the DocTrain East Conference in Burlington, MA, this week for sessions on DITA, simplified English, APIs and SDKs, along with tool presentations by the vendors.
The major tool announcement this week was MadCap’s DITA roadmap. Phase 1, due out in Q1 2009, will let users import and export DITA XML files. Phases 2 and 3 add more functionality, including support for the DITA schema. MadCap’s DITA support lets technical communicators create DITA XML files but saves them from having to use the DITA Toolkit to publish (transform) the output.
Author-it Software Corporation will release Author-it 5.2 in December, with support for structured authoring and DITA 1.1. Author-it was the first authoring tool to support DITA by means of custom topic templates that published DITA XML files.
Adobe demonstrated some of the new features in Acrobat 9 and, while very little could be announced, expect to see the next version of RoboHelp sometime around Q2 2009.
And with more DITA news, Robert Anderson from IBM said that DITA 1.2 is currently in review and should also be available during Q2 2009.
For more information (and to see the slide decks from the presentations), visit the DocTrain East 2008 website.
Indigo Byte Systems announces that the new version of its software help-authoring tool, Dr.Explain 3.1, is available.
Dr.Explain is the only software documentation tool that captures snapshots of live application screens and automatically recognizes and annotates all significant controls: buttons, text fields, menus, options, and others. Until version 3.1, many software developers and vendors have been using Dr.Explain to document their Windows software, HTML pages, or Flash (SWF) applications. Now, Dr.Explain 3.1 enters the Java world. Java developers can benefit from the same technology, and automatically generate professional documentation for their Java applications made with Swing components.
For more information, see their website.
Comments