Content Governance is a Must for Every Enterprise

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https://youtu.be/ 0gcRLPxNkns - The Risks and Potentials of Content – Why Content Governance is a Must for Every Enterprise

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Welcome to the Future of Content

Someday, I would like to attend this conference, especially in Las Vegas.

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https://youtu.be/ WS6RP2JvNpo - Welcome to the Future of Content | Keynote | Experience Makers 2023, Las Vegas

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Missing the Title

When I was going to view a video about content - a topic that technical writers would be interested in learning about - I had to select a Job title or role and my role is "Senior Technical Writer" but I would have accepted "Technical Writer" as well... except neither of those choices are available. I selected Other.

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Is MS Word still a good program?

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https://youtu.be/ gbTdED-Cp98

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The Next Generation of Adobe Tech Comm

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https://youtu.be/ De--Tb1N5nI - Adobe Technical Communication Special Event – Fall 2022

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What is Structured Content?

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https://youtu.be/ 0ZucLoHpZR4 - What is Structured Content?

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Integrating eLearning with Adobe RoboHelp

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Adobe Seminar I Should Watch Sooner Than Later

Adobe Seminar I should watch sooner than later…

Adobe Issue

 On my work laptop, I seem to be having an issue with Adobe IDs. I have one Adobe ID for RoboHelp and a separate Adobe ID for Adobe Creative Cloud. It appears that I can't use two distinct Adobe IDs on the same laptop, even though I have been doing so for quite some time. I think the main difference is that I didn't have a newer version of RoboHelp installed on my laptop until recently. In any case, one of my pet peeves, when it comes to laptops and the user interface, is when I see a message that is incorrect. Case in point, I don't have Photoshop open - I have Dreamweaver open - and the message I see tells me to close Photoshop. I often try to put myself in the role of a user who is not as ... 

I consider myself a dangerous user when I use a laptop or computer. I can trace using a computer back several decades when a family friend, who worked for [redacted] let us use a computer at our house. It had two 5 1/4" floppy drives - that's how long ago I can trace back my computer usage. Later, there was a computer with a 3.5" disk drive in the house. 

My point is that someone who does not have as long of a history with computers could likely become very confused when seeing a message to close a program that is not open to resolve an issue. I recognize the message as a specific message being used in the incorrect circumstance. Obviously, the message should say Close this window to quit Dreamweaver instead of Close this window to quit Photoshop because I do not have Photoshop open. 

Actually, a better message would be Close this window to quit the Creative Cloud app that you were using when this message displayed - even if it is wordy.

Who is Adobe's Target Audience? Not a Technical Writer (apparently?)

Apply Source Formatting

css Apply Source Formatting DW 2017

Unbelievablly Cool to Consider

Today, bright & early on a Thursday, I read a post on the HATT list from yesterday. The post was a message from "Lea Rush" who is a Senior Software and Documentation Specialist at Astoria-Pacific, which is located at 15130 SE 82nd Drive in Clackamas, OR. [website: www.astoria-pacific.com]. Her post:

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I’ve been using Framemaker 8 to publish compiled HTML help for a long, long time. My office is about to be universally updated to Office 365, and it will include Publisher. With the update model for Win10 changing to continual updates, I suspect that the day in which I can no longer baby along my ancient Frame installation is fast approaching. I’m exploring my options for future documentation support.

The biggest hurdle is conditional text. Most of it is fairly granular, down to individual words. Does Publisher have anything like that? Can it do compiled HTML in the first place?

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I wrote back the following:

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Greetings from Coralville, IA!
I’m not seeing the connection between MS Publisher & FrameMaker so I’m curious. Why do you think MS Publisher is interlinked with FrameMaker? MS Publisher is a tool to create brochures, business cards, calendars, greeting cards, labels, newsletters, and postcards*, but at least on the surface has very little to do with generating CHM files. I also happen to have FrameMaker installed on my laptop, but I am not actively using it. I use RoboHelp 2015 to generate browser-based help for disaster recovery documentation.

I hope to learn something new about MS Publisher & FrameMaker that I never knew before!

My blog: http://prhmusic.blogspot.com
Me Playing Drums: http://prhmusic.blogspot.com/p/videos-of-me-playing-drums.html
My Favorite Band: Bayside Gabes Iowa City 2019-01-30
Twitter: @prhmusic


*Yes, fine. I admit I opened Publisher 2010 (what I have on my laptop) and transcribed the options in the “Most Popular” section – I don’t have a reason to use MS Publisher ever…

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But then I asked myself some questions:

1. Where is Clackamas, OR?
• I found out it is near Portland, OR.
• 
2. How long would it take me to drive to Clackamas, OR?
• Per Google, anywhere from 28 -30 hours.
3. What famous bands are from the area?  
• There's a list from Wikipedia on another post - it was quite impressively long!

So, yeah, that's how my Thursday AM is starting.

No Info about RH on the Adobe Blog?

Pick An Order and Stay In Order

I wish the company that creates the software I use every day in my role as a Senior Technical Writer found a way to nail little details like this:

The subject of the email implies an order - FrameMaker, then RoboHelp.The first paragraph continues that order, mentioning the products in the same order - FrameMaker, then RoboHelp. Then I read the next paragraph. It is about an event happening regarding RoboHelp, which is being held on September 18. Then Then I read the next paragraph. It is about an event happening regarding FrameMaker, which is being held on September 17.

Not only are the products reversed, the events are listed in non-chronological order!

Frustrating!

Something odd happened - my Adobe software is gone! I use Dreamweaver every day!! I submitted a ticket to the Help Desk so hopefully this is just temporary.

Here's how Adobe is integrated into my life at work.

This is on my Start menu - I created this group because they are apps that I wasn't using every day so I didn't want it to clutter the menu.

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This is on my Start menu - Adobe created this group when it was installed. I used these programs more frequently.

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This is what I see for the "Adobe Creative Cloud" - it says I can 'try' or 'buy' but I already had them.

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Two Topics: dita OR DITA and Rahel-Anne-Bailie

I got an email with this link - https://2017-adobe-dita-world.meetus.adobeevents.com/ - and, because I'm always curious about "DITA" - in that I am somewhat familiar with it but not currently using it, mainly because I'm using RoboHelp for my disaster recovery documentation, not FrameMaker - but I've never heard of "dita" which means I guess I have another buzzword to learn.

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I decided to listen to this session:

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I'm 12:39 into the session - the total session is just under 1 hour - and I am already learning a lot, but only when I'm not focusing on picking flyshit out of pepper:

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I'm not going to reproduce the presentation here, but these are some of the slides that inspire me to think about applying structure to my content:

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Customers don't want to be "sold" - they want to be "supported" is what she said when this slide was on the screen:

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Editor's Note: You need to stop. Click the link if you want more information.

Was Honesty a Mistake?

Adobe sent me a survey about their product. These are some of the comments I sent to them to consider.

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The sample projects are for version 9 or 10 or 11; the documentation rarely has navigation information - it says what widget to set but not how to get to the screen with that widget; I've sent inquiries to tech support that required me to follow-up because I had no response within a week; the youtube videos are a joke - there's only outdated information about RoboHelp while FrameMaker has a bunch of up-to-date videos; the only Word document provided to set up linking to Word functionality has all Normal style - not headings or even a "Body Text" style so it's absolutely worthless; the only videos I've seen about linking to Word documents are for version 9; when you do the conversion settings, every Word style in every linked Word doc is included and there's no way to figure out which style came from what linked Word document; there's no way to link to Word docs in multiple folders without going to each folder - you can't select a base folder and tell RoboHelp to create a link to every *.docx file in all the sub-folders; there's no reporting for linked Word documents - even the ability to run a report that says "there are X number of linked Word documents in this project; I can create a folder in the Project Manager tab and it will not show up so if I try to create a folder a second time with the same name, RoboHelp tells me the folder exists even though it doesn't show in my Project Manager; the .fpj files are an absolute joke as I delete all empty directories but because the directory is listed in the .fpj file, it is always recreated, even though it is an obsolete folder and unnecessary; editing the .fpj file in Notepad has led to countless times of going back to a backup - I run a back up of my project folders because I am unsure whether there is going to be some new & mysterious error that corrupts my linked Word documents.

All that said, I LOVE RoboHelp - I would still chose it as my tool. I was a RoboHelp MVP many years ago and understand the way the tool works most of the time. The above is a list of where there is a gap between what the tool was intended to do and how I am using the tool, which in some cases may be a fringe use case - I get that. You asked for my opinion....

Oh, and when I go to Help > About, the information scrolls. I had to quickly type the version before it disappeared or wait until it scrolled through again.

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Authoring: Right To Left language support - will never use
Authoring: Support for creating tabbed content - don't know what is meant by this
Collaboration: Integration with other CMS connectors - what other CMS connectors?
Collaboration: SharePoint integration improvements - what improvements?
Collaboration: Support for real-time multi-author topic creation (e.g. Google Docs) - this would be HUGE!!
Collaboration: Web based review workflow - sounds interesting - would depend upon how it is implemented
Publishing: eBooks output enhancements - no need for this in my world
Publishing: Improvements in context sensitive help - not linking to an application so not relevant
Publishing: Out-of-box publishing to wikis - THIS would be HUGE. The other side of it would be to be able to import an existing Wiki by entering a URL and automagically creating RoboHelp topics in a RoboHelp project and having the same type of linking that exists between Word documents on a network and the pages in a Wiki
RoboHelp Server enhancements - not using

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I may seem to be negative in this survey and I don't want anyone reading this to be ashamed or to feel bad. I am using RoboHelp to link to Word documents on a network drive to create comprehensive disaster recovery documentation. I feel like I'm working with the linking to Word documents in a fairly 'real world' situation and because of that, I run into gaps, such as being able to generate a list of the linked Word documents in my project; where styles are coming from when I go to map between the CSS and the Word template and, on top of that, I was told that even if I delete a style in a Word document, that style will still show up in the list of styles - which caused me to almost fall over in shock when I read that in the email from Technical Support! If I delete a style in a Word document and there are no other linked Word documents with that style, that style SHOULD NOT BE LISTED (can you tell I feel passionate about this?!?) in the window where you link between the CSS and the Word doc.

I will also say that I wish there was a way to set up content reuse within the linked Word documents. I created a Word document with bookmarks and then, within my linked Word documents, I set up references to that Word document with fields. I did that mainly so I could have consistent headings across all of the linked Word documents. I am in the infancy of implementing this concept but I see a value in eventually expanding what I am doing to include what i would create a snippet for, if all these linked Word documents were imported into RoboHelp and not linked to the project. The reason I am linking to the project is because other teams in my department are actually the ones responsible for authoring the content. There is content in many formats - CSV, Excel, PDF, VSD - and I am providing a single place to get all of that information. Again, I realize I may be a fringe use case.

And, as I said earlier, I DO like RoboHelp - I think it serves my purpose decently. Madcap Flare forces you to import your Word documents, which is not an option. Doc-to-Help makes your primary authoring environment be Word, which I didn't want.

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9 Years of Construction!

While I was looking for information about RoboHelp in the Adobe forums, I stumbled upon a thread that stated it was under construction and had a 'last modified' date 3/27/2008. I couldn't resist being snarky...

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Life at Another Employer was like THIS

At a previous employer (10/2010 - 4/2011), I was in the same type of position as Zev Levi, the originator of the thread below, except that I wasn't about working in a different country. In my situation, it was about:

• explaining to product managers and developers and a co-worker why their documentation ideas [were] troublesome 
• defending my 15 years, 8 months, 5 days of experience against terrible technical writing practices, chief among them being to manually type a table of contents for a ~150 page user guide, printing it, verifying the page number in the table of contents matches the actual page, fixing, reprinting, and repeating that process. 
• biting my tongue when, after showing my co-worker that an automatic table of contents could be generated from headings in the Adobe InDesign file (just like Microsoft Word), doing so was dismissed as "too complicated."

Thus, when Peter Neilson wrote "Attitude Adjustment being inappropriate, the solution devolves to doing an end run, never showing the final version to the SME until it is too late for enemy action. If the SME outranks you substantially, be ready to take a job elsewhere, preferably in an entirely different profession", I smiled and replaced the word "profession" with "industry" as that's exactly what I ended up doing.

In fact, 5 years, 10 months ago today, I left the medical devices industry. An incredibly long 1 month, 2 weeks, 4 days later, I began working in the education industry. I worked in that industry for 4 years, 7 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, which is when I had to begin Job Search 2016. Ultimately, though, I landed up.

And that is ALL that matters today. Below is the thread on Techwr-L that instigated the brief trip down memory lane.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Neilson
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2017 8:15 AM
To: techwr-l@lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: Re: Nightmare Library

I've answered this at incredible length in a private note to Zev.
Basically it is attitude and audience. I think that Zev's colleagues believe they are themselves the audience. I also suspect that they are possessed of Ample Attitude.

The problem is akin to writing a popular article about some aspect of mathematics, and showing it to a mathematician. He (the mathematician) will find plenty of things "totally wrong" about what you wrote, as well as finding things wrong with YOU and with your dreadful lack of understanding in mathematics. And that's just for starters. (Done there, been that!)

Attitude Adjustment being inappropriate, the solution devolves to doing an end run, never showing the final version to the SME until it is too late for enemy action. If the SME outranks you substantially, be ready to take a job elsewhere, preferably in an entirely different profession.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+lynne.wright=kronos.com@lists.techwr-l.com
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lynne.wright=kronos.com@lists.techwr-l.com]
> On Behalf Of Zev Levi
> Sent: February-20-17 2:24 AM
> To: techwr-l
> Subject: Nightmare Library
>
> Hi all,
>
> I work in a country where English is spoken as a second language (if
> at
> all) and I often find myself explaining to product managers and
> developers why their documentation ideas are troublesome. ("Yes, the
> sentence you changed is clear to you but, as it's now five lines long,
> it is confusing to readers. We must explain ideas using shorter
> sentences.")
>
> Is anyone aware of a virtual library of bad-documentation examples (a
> library of tech-doc nightmares)? I'd like to search for *long
> sentences* and find examples of unclear documentation.
>
> It would be easier to convince PMs of writing guidelines if they tried
> reading a doc that didn't follow them.
>
> I haven't had any luck googling these terms; I'm looking for
> documentation examples and google generally returns links to forums.
>
> Cheers
>
> Zev

ExtendScript - the New Frontier to Tame

I am using the “link Word documents” functionality within RoboHelp 2015.

My issue is my hyperlink in the Word doc is converted from a relative path to an absolute path.

You see, I have a Word doc in this folder – S:\Dir1\Dir2\Xlec.docx. Inside that file, there is a link to Xlec.pdf. I was trying to make it that a link in the Word doc will open the PDF after I compile my RoboHelp project and distribute browser-based Help. What happens now is the hyperlink is converted to an absolute path and I need it to be a relative path.

The workflow would be

1. Add a link to the PDF in the Word doc
2. Link to the Word doc in RoboHelp
3. The Word document is updated.
4. I see the little icon that says the Word doc has been updated in RoboHelp.
5. I copy the PDF to my RH project directory
6. I recompile my output. When I access the topic that RoboHelp created for the Word doc, the link opens the PDF.

However, what I’ve learned is that when RoboHelp creates the HTML page for the Word doc, it uses an absolute link, not a relative link.

It’s been suggested that a workaround is to write a script in ExtendScript to run whenever I import from Word or update a linked file and go through the topics automatically and change the now absolute link into a relative link.

Currently, I'm on the hunt for an existing ExtendScript that does this. Thus far, I'm not having a lot of success.