[FM Discuss] Hi folks

Wed Jan 3 01:43:25 PST 2018

Really great, thoughtful and useful responses from you guys.

I should make it clear that while I can claim *some* competence in tech writing by way of the intersection of English comp teaching and the documentation that's intrinsic to a SE manager (mostly technical specs for our dev team, QA, the Biz people, etc, plus a few whitepapers for external audiences), I've never held the actual title of tech writer -- that is what I'm shooting for -- so I wouldn't want to give the impression that I can bless the Floss world overall with TW expertise or meta- insight, as Mick is suggesting (or I guess Walter).  I need the TW practice myself.   I've certainly never done end-user oriented documentation.  I can always do general editing (what I think Walter is calling Copy Editing) for anyone else's texts in progress, but that doesn't seem to be the major need right now; and I'm guessing that most active people on this list are good writers who don't really need further copy editing skills in any case.

I will say that, as someone who IS looking at the whole world of tech writing with fairly new eyes, one thing that really strikes me is a general uncertainty, in the 'trade', about how much effort to devote to written (ie text-and-screenshot) type manuals as opposed to video tutorials.  Clearly there remains a need for RoboHelp-type Help pages, and also clearly a need for written API documentation for programmers.  And for people who are actually learning how to code, as such, there is probably still a majority preference for written references and perhaps tutorials.  But for people who are coming new to especially graphically-oriented software, such as Inkscape or Blender, or really even Audacity, I do wonder about the utility of the text-and-screenshot mode of introduction.  Personally I would never have learned Flash, Blender, Unity3D, Audacity or anything else I've picked up in the past 7 years from that format.  And I'm a literature professor by major vocation, who generally worships the written word -- just not so much in this context.  Which raises the question of whether Floss would ever consider opening itself up to visual modes of presentation.  Of course, this would never have come up in Adam Hyde's original vision, since he was looking for supplemental docs for in-person workshops; and maybe Floss needs to keep with that niche, I dunno.  This is more a question I have for the Tech Writing/Tech Communication industry in general, but it certainly comes up here if we're talking about what 'manuals' should look like in 2018.

The other possible niche I take away from the discussion on this list today is one where a writer is focused on some very-specific operation within a given tool, or perhaps in the integration of several tools (which would by definition never be deeply addressed in the native docs for either tool).  For example, I would love some detailed documentation on how to get a Unity3D gaming project to integrate with Adobe Captivate (which is one of the industry-leading eLearning authoring tools, just fyi).  I'd write that myself, except I can't get it to work 😊.   But I've also been considering, for example, doing some (perhaps written, perhaps vid) documentation around specific operations within 3D game physics in Unity.  In fact I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that, whether it ends up having anything to do with Floss or not.

I really appreciate the discussion, in any case.  It may be that the meta-discussion (what is Floss for these days) is better left to the older hands, like you guys.  But, as I am basically a humanities professor, a lack of expertise in a given field has rarely gotten in the way of my having opinions...

Matt

________________________________
From: Discuss <discuss-bounces at lists.flossmanuals.net> on behalf of Mick Chesterman <mick at flossmanuals.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 3, 2018 1:52 AM
To: discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
Subject: Re: [FM Discuss] Hi folks

On 03/01/2018 00:41, Gregory Pittman wrote:
> On 01/02/2018 06:36 PM, M R wrote:
>> Hi Greg (and whomever else):
>>
>>
> I'm hoping there will be plenty of answers other than mine. To some
> extent, flossmanuals fills a need where no good manuals exist. Beyond
> that, I've seen a number of comprehensive manuals associated with
> projects that are hard to absorb as a new user. There may be a need for
> a particular point of view. Part of what you need to decide is whether
> you think that something you're working on fills a need.
>
>
> One might argue that there never are too many manuals, though I would
> say that each should justify its existence. Also, existing manuals
> become dated. The one that Christoph and I wrote in 2009 is now in many
> ways outmoded by new developments in Scribus.

Hi Matt,

I would agree with Greg, It's a good question and can vary for lots of
people. Most of this is different manuals for different needs. A
discussion on this would be good for an updated manual.

Going back to the original premise it was started by Adam Hyde who
wanted supplementary docs for the workshops he was giving and I still
think that is in the DNA of FM. Beginner docs focused on a particular
area of practice. Thus docs don't have to be exhaustive / complete list
of features.

I think one of Adam's other big pushes was to use FM as a tempate for to
fill the gap of a web to print  collaborative workflow. He build a lot
of momentum around that which was great to pull people in to the project
and get funding.

Having a more narrow focus allows the manual to be shorter and thus
easier to translate and print (and update in theory!).
It also means that by having clustered manuals around topics like,
Video, Audio, Graphics, Net Security, you build a network of
contributors and as a workshop leader you have a repository you can pick
and mix from when creating tailored courses (I used to do this when
running a DIY media centre in Salford).

Having said that, there hasn't really been a new manual or even an
updated one on FM for some time, althought there is good work going on
with Inkscape, but I would say that is due to a lack of active
facilitation and outreach rather than a fault in scope.

It would be great to hear other thoughts. FM has been coasting for a
while now, 2018 is probably a good time to resolve and document some of
these issues and then make a push to make FM sustaining.

nice one
Mick

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