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Subject:RE: Current trends in Authoring Tools? From:"Brierley, Sean" <Sean -dot- Brierley -at- ipc -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Feb 2007 13:34:13 -0500
Right, but there's a better way worth investigating:
Hire a tech writer to set up a Word or FrameMaker template, and that's
all. It's a one time cost that is inexpensive spread over several
projects.
For minimum wage, perhaps $7.10 per hour, you can get a high school
student to come in and pound out the text in Notepad, review procedures,
etc. They know English, as they have been using the language since
second grade, and by using Notepad, they don't really need to know
computer software (thus, no training costs or style/formatting errors).
Then, have a secretarial temp. copy and paste the text of the student
from notepad and paste it into either Word or FrameMaker (remember, both
are set up previously) then spell chuck.
Finally have a supervisor with some tool-use under their belt print the
result to PDF for distribution.
It's a remarkably low-cost effort using native speakers that should meet
the needs.
Regards.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Dori Green
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 11:47 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Current trends in Authoring Tools?
<snip>
No insult intended, just stating the reality in my neck of the woods
(and most of the woods in which I have travelled). I've used Frame and
I'm not using it on this job.
As the TW I can review a process and mark required changes on forty
existing documents in an afternoon. I usually also end up sitting at
the keyboard to make those changes and do the nit-picking administrative
trivia associated with recording them.
My boss is just now beginning to grok how much the project might be
moved forward if he provides me with some temporary clerical help for
some of this effort.
We are located in rural upstate New York. We would almost certainly
have to reach to Buffalo or Rochester to find a trained Frame typist to
make those changes, and he or she would probably require payment higher
than my salary to entice them into the 40-mile commute each way. Makes
it very hard to convince Management to provide clerical support.
I have elected instead to use Word on this project, and to create
"dossiers"
of small documents to assemble larger "process manuals". We can get a
local Word-using temp for less than $10 per hour (to the agency), and
they don't need more than half a day to provide a talented candidate.
Right tool for the job. McGuyver finally got one of those 50-in-one
pocket tools and look at him today -- built himself a stargate and he's
zipping around multiple universes.
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