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Documentia Inc. Blog by John David Hickey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.documentia.ca.
Category Archives: Advice
Canaries
The truth of the matter is that the documentation of a product should be excellent. The grammar and style should be flawless and the information should be easy to read and retain. Producing excellent documentation is not easy because it … Continue reading
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Romancing the RoboHelp
In my latest project, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the joys of Adobe RoboHelp and Framemaker to produce some online help. Please see my previous post about RoboHelp that I’ve updated to include RoboHelp 11. I’ve been using RoboHelp for … Continue reading
Writing and Editing
Writing is like building a house in the woods where no house previously existed. Re-writing is like demolishing a house in the woods and rebuilding it to suit your needs and stylish flair. Editing is like: inspecting every door and … Continue reading
Strengthen Your Writing
Reading technical documentation is nobody’s idea of an enjoyable night in. You could try to make it special with some wine and candlelight, but it’s still going to be a stretch. Therefore, the documentation needs to strike that balance between … Continue reading
Fixing the Giant Ship
I was looking up some stories and I came across this Islamic folktale: – The following is an incident about an engine failure in a giant ship. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could … Continue reading
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Professional Body Language
When you are working with people, either as a co-worker or as a manager, and you have someone explaining something to you that either you don’t understand or you think is outlandish, you need to hide these emotions from your … Continue reading
Random Advice
Just in case any of you go crazy and decide to be Technical Writers, let me impart this nugget of wisdom: when writing instructions, be aware that users PRESS keys on a keyboard and they CLICK buttons on the interface. … Continue reading
Pictures vs Words
I submitted a sample draft of a User Guide to my client a few days ago and I got the feedback today. Most of it was fine, but this one comment made my left eye twitch: Is there a way … Continue reading
Creating Topics in Robohelp from a Frame document
I’m currently relearning the joys of RoboHelp after a few years and a few versions of unfamiliarity and I hit a snag on trying to convert documents into topics. I’m using Framemaker 10 and RoboHelp 9 (as part of the … Continue reading
Blueberry Perception of Techwriters
Last week, my 7 year-old Toshibasaurus finally broke down (actually, it was the battery and power pack that died). I could just replace the battery/power pack, but truth be told, the Toshibasaurus was getting long in the tooth and slow … Continue reading