Comments on: What do you write?

By: w0

w0 — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:48:03 +0000

Sure – my documents are fairly homogeneous. I have 3 – 4 sources of information, 1 audience, 1 output format. Large differences in process occur when I’m acting as either project manager vs writer vs editor, but they are very different tasks.

Hey! check this out, I distilled my process (as a semi-autonomous TW) into a GIF file. I don’t claim that the following diagram is the paradigm of tech writing, but it works for me.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tw314pi/Semicolon?authkey=9qflgEBdnwQ#5247401428013867810

Notes:
1) “wrt:whole product” is when I consider where the piece I’m working on fits into the larger product I am responsible for.

2) “procedures” under “Write:”, in DITA should be tasks, heh but that’s just semantics.

Is this what you were curious about? Does this tie into your message and my response to this post: http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2008/07/22/consideration-layer-model/

By: Gordon McLean

Gordon McLean — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:49:51 +0000

w0 – thanks for chipping in. Interesting to hear that you’ve done little “non-print” work, which is the complete opposite from me.

Do you find you can take processes and working practices across from one type of document to another?

By: w0

w0 — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:34:23 +0000

- Conceptual and Procedural L3-L5 Networking Documentation (maybe a little L2)
- Procedural OS System Documentation
- Procedural Hardware Documentation
- Network/LAN Application Analysis
- Non-technical User Documentation (actually “dumb user”) GUI based documentation.

The funny thing is that in all my years of tech writing, I’ve done barely any non-print documentation.