TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
<<Such formatting-type questions are frivolous; a lot of customers would
skip these questions, and are a matter of opinion which you're likely to get
inconclusive results from in any case.>>
In my job we ask the client all sorts of questions including questions about
formatting. We've found that if we don't ask, we have to redo work later.
For example, I am in the process of writing a system maintenance and
operations guide for a customer who has requested that all documents
delivered be in Word files with "little or no formatting." The reason: the
client needs to merge this document with others that are already in an
established format. This customer also provided us with a list of specific
information that needed to be included in the documentation. The customer
went through the outline and the first draft and deleted whole sections that
I thought needed to be there.
The customer owns the application and the documentation we are developing,
so who am I to argue. (I did try to convince them otherwise but no luck. ;-)
My preference would have been to deliver the document fully formatted in
FrameMaker files. Given the technical nature of the document, I would have
also included more information than the client requested.
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.comhttp://www.miramo.com +++
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
