Hyperviews Online

On July 30, Online SIG Content Management lead Scot Abel published an article, “10 DITA Lessons Learned From Tech Writers in the Trenches,” based on interviews with technical writers at more than 20 software companies who are using DITA to create documentation at this time. Members report finding the article meets Scot’s promise of “useful advice, practical tips, honest warnings, and lessons learned… straight forward and useful information.”

The Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines are posted, and include text and tone, and guidelines on writing software messages.

Sun Microsystems has made its GNOME Documentation Style Guide available online, including chapters on basics of information design and writing for international audience

Open Source Software (OSS) refers to any application for which the source code is distributed. A definition is available online.

Many organisations work with both Open Source Software and proprietary commerical software. Open source content management sytems have the advantage of supporting open standards and thus being easier to integrate with other open source and with proprietary systems. The international association for Open Source Content Management has more information.

Please note: based on the comments, Marcia Poulsen has revised the presentation we published here. The revision has been posted: http://stc-on.org/online/topics/content-management/2006/08/19/topic-types/ 

Online SIG member Marcia Poulsen presented “The Three Topic Types — Concept, Tasks, and Reference — and How to Use them Effectively: Borrowing Best Practices from DITA” for the August 3 Central New York chapter meeting. The Online SIG has posted the slides.

It’s our goal to publish a chapter meeting each month, and to podcast as many of those as possible. (more…)

Announcement by Heather Hedden

The joint international conference of the American Society of Indexers and the Indexing and Abstracting Society of Canada, to be held in Toronto June 15-17, has a number of sessions and workshops that would be of interest to those in the field of online content, especially those who would like to know more about creating online indexes.

Below is just a sampling of the program: (more…)

STC Online SIG member Scott Abel is our Content Management Lead. You can follow news of Content Management on Scott’s website, http://www.thecontentwrangler.com/. Subscribe to the RSS feed to stay abreast of developments in Content Management and technical communication.

IBM Task Modeler is a tool for rapidly creating and analyzing models of human activity as a hierarchy of tasks and related elements.

An information architect can use Task Modeler to design DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) maps. A usability practitioner can produce either classic HTA (Hierarchical Task Analysis) diagrams or RAG (Roles and Goals) diagrams.

For detailed information about this tool (posted February 9, 2006) visit http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/taskmodeler

The April, 2006 issue of the newsletter of the STC UK Chapter has been posted at:
http://www.stcuk.org/newsletters/April2006/index.htm

“Tools, Tips, and Websites,” starting with Content Management Strategies, focus on several aspects of online communication. Desktop search, MS Word’s RD field code, and capturing an image from Windows Media Player are included, along with content management and Online Help.

Maps are created online with a variety of software tools. Applications currently in use include those listed here. (more…)