One of the most neglected aspects of the discussion of topic-based writing is that of provenance. Every technical document has provenance of some kind. It may be a highly structured and elaborate provenance, such as certification according to a standard performed by an outside agency, or it may be the implicit provenance of being published… Read More »
There is a lot of talk in tech comm today about topic-based writing, but very little about topic-based information design. This is a problem, because, in the age of the Web, and particularly of the mobile Web, topic-based information design is essential. Topic-based writing is often perceived (and practiced) as nothing more than writing in small,… Read More »
In The Tyranny of the Terrible Troika, I complained that the now almost universal trio of concept, task, and reference did not properly represent what topic-based writing and information typing are really about, and I promised to show why each one, as popularly practiced, fails as both a topic type and as an information type.… Read More »
Tom Johnson’s blog post Unconscious Meaning Suggested from the Structure and Shape of Help, includes a graphic showing three shapes of content: Tom Johnson’s “Shapes of Help” graphic. These three shapes are meant to represent the DITA topic triad of concept, task, and reference. I didn’t get it. As I said in a comment on Tom’s blog, I… Read More »
I was astonished at Sarah Maddox’s statement, in her guest post Why don’t technical writers use wikis — or do they? on I’d Rather be Writing, that wikis are not good at topic-based writing. Huh? Wikis are all about topic-based writing. In fact, it is the only type of writing they really support. What’s wrong here?… Read More »
One of the less obvious but more important characteristics of an Every Page is Page One topic is that it stays on one level. As with the other characteristics I have discussed in this series, being standalone, having a specific limited purpose, and establishing its context, staying on one level is not an ideal, but… Read More »
Last month I wrote that Every Page is Page One Topics are Everywhere, and I listed the principle characteristics of such topic as I see them. I said I would write in more depth about each of these characteristics. This is the first of those posts, on the standalone property of EPPO topics. The word… Read More »
The one concession I have been willing to make to the fine chunking characteristic of many DITA implementations is that it was a boon to translation. Apparently not so, according to a recent blog post on Content Rules. The problem is that fine chunking tends to obscure context, making the content impossible to translate reliably.… Read More »
In a recent blog post, Tom Johnson writes on The Importance of Chunking for Sorting. He also acknowledges that finely chunking content can cause problems when you try to retrieve that content with a query: