[FM Discuss] Alternative Party

[Janet Swisher]

Hi Tomi,

Thanks for the event report. It sounds interesting and fun.

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Tomi Toivio <tomi at flossmanuals.net> wrote:

> Soon we are finally starting the workshops and translation sprints. There
> are various other developments too. For an example we are going to
> collaborate with technical documentation and translation students.
>
> It seems very hard to get writers to register. I hope that workshops and
> booksprints are the solution to this problem.

Are there any nearby universities or technical colleges with programs
of study in technical writing/technical communication? My impression
is that this is not as common in Europe as it is in the US. If not,
then perhaps students in computer science or human factors, in
addition to translation studies, might be interested.

> I heard there is need for Open Source CAD documentation. Has anybody been
> thinking about this?

What software do you know about for open source CAD? This came up in
conversation over lunch at the Texas Open Source Symposium I attended
in the spring of 2008. I met a guy from Loredo, Texas who builds
Ubuntu PCs for customers in the Rio Grande valley. He was looking for
an open source CAD solution for a client that is an architecture firm.
A major stumbling block, apparently, is that the most common CAD data
formats are closed standards where you have to pay a bunch of money
just to get a copy of the spec. So, I'd be interested in hearing if
there is such software available.

--Janet