A new XML-based content management system that is not based on DITA. Bet you didn’t see that coming. But I think it tells us something interesting about the two sides of structured writing. Tom Johnson’s recent sponsored post explains the origins of Paligo, a relatively new CCMS out of Sweden. Paligo was developed by a company… Read More »
A little while back, Tom Johnson posted an article entitled Seeing things from the perspective of a learner in which he says, “The balance between knowing and not knowing is the tension that undergirds the whole profession of technical writing.”. I think that is absolutely correct. The point, after all, is to assist the reader on their… Read More »
In communication, they say, context is everything. Actually, “everything” consists of context and subject. Useful information is subject in context. The question is, which comes first: context or subject? In the book era, the content search pattern was: context first, subject afterwards. That is, suppose you deliver three different products and have released three different versions of… Read More »
Summary: Safari Flow represents a move to Every Page is Page One navigation for books, but its success is limited when the content is not written in Every Page is Page One style. At Tom Johnson’s suggestion, I have recently subscribed to Safari Flow. Safari Flow is a new take on the Safari Books Online… Read More »
Tom Johnson wrote a post recently in which he questioned the value of structured writing for developer documentation. Needless to say, I disagree. But Tom and I are not really at odds here. Rather, he means something different by “structured writing” than I do. Structured writing is about content quality, not publishing What I mean… Read More »
Summary: Writers worry about whether links will distract users. To discuss this concern, we need to begin by distinguishing between imperative links that command the reader to click and passive links that merely make finding ancillary material easier. Tom Johnson wrote a post recently in which he raised an important question about linking, and referred… Read More »
What is the right word to describe a node of a hypertext? What should we call the basic unit of information that we present to readers? Is it a page, a topic, or an article? (I’m going to take it as read that the answer is no longer “a book”. If you disagree, that’s what… Read More »
Why does help still kind of suck even after so many years? Tom Johnson asks this poignant question in his post Do We Need a New Approach to Help? Why Are Users So Apathetic Towards Help after 50 Years of Innovation? Tom provides a great survey of the trends and ideas in help design, starting with… Read More »
Tom Johnson started the discussion with Structured authoring versus the web. Sarah O’Keefe and Alan Pringle took it up in Structured authoring AND the Web. My turn: Structured authoring FOR the Web. One of my long term grievances is that structured authoring has been adopted piecemeal. Rather than approaching it holistically as a method that can provide a wide… Read More »
In his blog post, Two Competing Help Models: One-Stop Shopping or Specialized Stores?, Tom Johnson explores the dilemma posed by trying to put a company’s help information on the Web using the old tri-pane help paradigm. Do you combine all the help for your product lines into one site with a master TOC, or do you… Read More »