Re: Hard Copy Manuals: Who does layout?

["Huber, Mike" <mrhuber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

"Many years ago" is right. Composing directly into DTP is one of the basic
ideas of modern technical writing. And has been since dinosaurs ruled the
earth and programmers wrote manuals, maybe as far back as the mid-1970's.

Essentially, there are two big advantages:
1)      The writer knows the material, and uses the appropriate typographical
tools to communicate clearly. Tables, graphics, and text work together to
create an integrated information product that works better than the same
material would work separately. Some of that might be considered "artsy,"
but a lot of it is extremely pragmatic. For example, the writer knows when
it's important that a line of text (for example, a command line) not break.
The writer knows whether the comma right before the close-quote is
punctuation for the sentence or a vital piece of an example input. Look at
a modern manual, and you will notice that there are very few instances of
"see figure 12-b on page 29." The writer has placed figure 12-b right were
the reader is looking when the reader need figure 12-b. That kind of tight
integration comes from writing directly to the page.
2)      The development cycle is significantly longer when a writer has to proof
a typographer's work.

If you have time, you might want to look up what Brian W. Kernighan had to
say about the issue. He was one of the first software technical writers to
do his own page composition. His "The C Programming Language" was one of
the best manuals of it's time (my copy here on my desk has a copyright date
of 1978) and defined the C language for quite a few years. He wrote some
essays on why it's a good thing for writers to do their own page
composition. When you read the essays, remember that the learning curve on
the tools was severe - nroff and troff dot commands are nowhere near as
easy to write as HTML. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read them. I
don't think you will find much recent material, since it's been an accepted
practice for so long.

Mike Huber
mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com

-----Original Message-----
From:   Alexia Prendergast [SMTP:alexiap -at- SEAGATESOFTWARE -dot- COM]
Sent:   Wednesday, June 11, 1997 7:30 AM
To:     TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject:        Re: Hard Copy Manuals: Who does layout?

<peeling my own eyebrows off the ceiling...>

Many years ago, these tasks may have been different,
but today, information design is such a part of the
actual information development, that I can't imagine
writing without having control over presentation. If
design is to be involved, they can design the template
that the writers use in the DTP tool.

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