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.
Subject:Re: Single-sourcing DIDN'T work for me just now From:Sean Brierley <seanb_us -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 17 Sep 2003 13:07:47 -0700 (PDT)
It doesn't work all the time for everybody, just as my
WRX isn't the best car for everybody and not everybody
likes liver and onions.
So, I'd say what you take away from this is there are
absolutely never any absolutes when it comes to tech
writing workflows. <g>
Some people can't get their head around organization
and structure necessary to use single sourcing to save
time. Many projects don't benefit from single
sourcing; I have this one project where I essentially
turn an 800-page perfect leather-bound book into HTML
(well, sans the leather, of course, I include that
just to tell you the primary reason for this doc), and
I don't single source that effort. (I would single
source it *if* the project ever repeated, but it
doesn't ever repeat with the same content.)
Cheers,
Sean
--- "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- Users -dot- com> wrote:
> Here's an anecdote for all you folks who don't like
> single-sourcing. I'm currently writing a manual to
> document some software for which I wrote online help
> awhile back. So, I got the idea to recycle the text
> from the online help for part of the manual. After
> copying all the little chucks of text, which
> involved different secondary windows for different
> situations, and various other sort of
> multi-directional hypertext branching, then trying
> to organize this into a narrative passage suitable
> for a manual, I finally decided it was going to take
> me forever and give me a royal headache, so that I
> should just write the text from scratch, as it
> should be written for a manual.
>
NEED TO PUBLISH YOUR FRAMEMAKER CONTENT ONLINE?
?Mustang? (code name) is a NEW online publishing tool for FrameMaker that
lets you easily single-source content to Web, intranets, and online Help.
The interface is designed for FrameMaker users, so there is little or no
learning curve and no macro language required! See a live demo that
will take your breath away: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l3
---
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.
