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Subject:Re: DEBATE: Word-processing or DTP From:"D. Margulis" <ampersandvirgule -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 23 Jul 1998 04:38:56 -0400
One of the skills we are supposed to have as technical communicators is
the ability to think clearly and logically, but this issue always seems
to bring out our human tendency to rationalize our personal preferences
and behavior instead.
Let me try to separate the issues that some are trying to conflate:
First, different people have different strengths and interests (e.g.,
writing, proofreading, indexing, drawing, typographical design, layout,
production).
Second, a completed deliverable requires the application of multiple
crafts (e.g., writing, proofreading, indexing, drawing, typographical
design, layout, production).
Third, the best management, from the point of view of the worker, is a
system that enables each person to labor at that individual's preferred
craft or crafts.
Fourth, the best management, from the point of view of the investment
analyst, is a system that gets the job out the door at the lowest
possible cost.
I would submit that some of us only like to write, cannot for the life
of us imagine what all the hullabaloo is about fonts, margins, or
publishing software; others would be delighted to spend their days
turning out beautiful pages but could not care less about the logical
flow of the text, grammar, spelling, or accuracy of content; and others
enjoy having our fingers in every piece of the pie. I would further
submit that it is the exceptional manager who can devise a way to
satisfy both the third and fourth criteria I described above.
Division of labor has done much to advance technology over the millenia
(N.B.: I did not suggest it has advanced civilization <g>); and there is
no reason to suspect that the introduction of desktop publishing
software suddenly invalidated the principle. What it did was to empower
those of us who _want_ to have control over an integrated process,
irrespective of whether we have the needed skills, talents, or training.
It should not be viewed as having _necessitated_ that every one of us
abandon the areas in which we are expert in order to practice as
amateurs in all other areas.
