Update: I'm delighted with the latest additions to my web consulting portfolio, the new STC India portal, and its newsletter, Indus.
When you’re working in the Epic Editor, you may not be able to paste clipboard text that contains tags, such as:
This is a sample text that contains tags <passwd>such as this</passwd>.
You’ll see a warning note at the left bottom of the editor, like this:
While we toil away in front of the computers day in and day out, we take for granted and ignore the most valuable resource we possess – our safety and well being.
Take a moment to review the ergonomic guide at http://www.hp.com/ergo/.
What we do today has an impact in the years to come, and not just on ourselves.
Take care!
Did you know you could blog from Microsoft Office Word 2007?
This blog post was published by clicking Office Button > Publish > Blog. If it is the first time, your blog has to be registered.
I could insert a category; however, I couldn’t find a way to insert a tag (had to add them manually).
Some time back, there was an interesting discussion about the future of Technical Writing (TW).
Someone said, the way the standards and guides are being framed, there would be a day when TW would have templates and almost no scope for errors.
I use Perforce for version control of the documentation files. I noticed some files were revised and checked-in by other users. When I tried to get the latest version of the files by Sync to Head Revision, Perforce gave the following error:
Can’t clobber writable file…
I found it was because some of the files on my local drive were not in read-only mode. Its a known fact that when we check-in a file after modifications, Perforce marks our local copy of the file read-only. However, in this case, it was not known why that did not happen. It assumed that since the local file was not in read-only mode, the file was open for edit. If Perforce allowed Sync to Head Revision, the files could have been corrupted.
The solution was to manually mark my local copies of the files read-only. Now, Sync to Head Revision, Perforce did not throw any error message.
Click here to read about other users who encountered the same error message and their possible causes.
From http://www.writersua.com/surveys/tools09/index.html:
“Which tools do most of us find useful? Which tools provide us with the most satisfaction? This portion of the survey supplies you with a peer review to assist you in planning your tool acquisitions…"
"Note: Past surveys had consistently shown that well over 90% of respondents use Microsoft Word. We left Word off the survey to make room for other UA-specific tools."
[This article has been published in INDUS, March 2009 edition at http://indus.stc-india.org/. To view the article, browse to the bottom of the page for a list of articles or go to Out of the Box > Too Many Inputs Freak Out the Technical Writer.
You can also download the PDF copy.]
How to track and address inputs from multiple sources.
Sources of Inputs
No, this isn’t the case of ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth’ – because the technical communicators are not supposed to ‘spoil the broth.’ They’re expected to accept, make sense, and use information at all rates of traffic, and by all means. Figure 1 gives you an idea of the various sources of inputs.
Figure 1: Sources of Inputs
Accuracy, quality, and sometimes, speed are non-negotiable. In such a scenario, this article presents some of the practices that have helped me track and address inputs effectively – regardless of their volume and criticality.
[This article has been published in MITWA News, January 2009 edition. It is available for the members of MITWA Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MITWA.
Download the PDF copy.]
How Technical Communicators can deal with frustrating moments at work.
One of the topics at STC India’s 10th Annual Conference in Pune dealt with the emotional train of thoughts that the Technical Communicators ride on during their daily activities. This article presents further commentary about the same subject.
@ my world (personal blog)