52nd Annual STC Conference:
These are a few of my favourite things

by Fei Min Lorente, Volunteer Manager and
Margie Yundt, Management SIG Co-ordinator and Copy Editor

Editor's Note: For a general description of the conference, read Carol Lawless's article.

So many sessions, so little time but here are some highlights from the conference this year from a couple of your council members who were lucky enough to attend—enjoy!

Managing Implementation of Structured Authoring

by Fei Min Lorente

This presentation was delivered by Sarah O'Keefe, and if you've used FrameMaker for any length of time, you'll know that she's one of the authors of FrameMaker 7: The Complete Reference, as well as other FrameMaker books. It was akin to meeting a favourite author when I shook her hand and she remembered my name from the FrameMaker online user group.

Well, it turned out that Sarah is also a wonderful presenter. Her expertise in the topic was obvious, and she delivered her information with a sense of humour that made us laugh at all the inevitable mistakes that people make when converting to structured documentation; this also made us remember to avoid those mistakes. She took us through the process of implementing a structured documentation system from getting the budget to using the system to produce documentation. She used her personal experience to point out real-world facts you have to face, such as:

• making a business case for investing the money it will take to convert your documentation and your processes; companies won't let you do XML because it's cool
• the costs you have to consider, including hidden ones like reduced productivity while people learn a new system
• the importance of stating your requirements, defining your workflow, and making sure you have measurements for success

She also shared solutions to the challenges she had to overcome in her implementation of a structured authoring environment. For instance, she cautioned against making small incremental changes to your defined structure because it would invalidate any documents that had already used that structure. She suggested treating the structure definition as a piece of software with versioned releases.

Two of the gems of information that I picked up are:

• XSL-FO (the language you use to format XML for print) isn't quite as comprehensive as FrameMaker, so you may have to be satisfied with "good enough" formatting. For example, XSL-FO does not do rotated text.
• The FrameMaker XML converter does not handle callouts that you've added to screen shots, so use Photoshop instead and layer the callouts.

I wish you could have been there to hear her yourselves, but failing that, you can see her presentation slides at http://www.scriptorium.com/StructuredAuthoringSTC.pdf. I wish we could afford her consulting services, but I'll have to make do with her books. If you've ever posted on www.frameusers.com, though, you may have received free advice from Sarah. She's just helpful that way.

Bill, We Need to Talk

by Margie Yundt

After wrestling with Microsoft Word for over a decade, you'd think I'd have it mastered by now, but sadly no. Every time I think I have it figured out, Bill throws me a curve ball. So, I thought I would attend the "Tips for Using Word for Documentation" session at the conference, couldn't hurt, right? Besides, the session description read "learn how to prevent corruption and create stable documents in Microsoft 2003." Okay, so I hoped this had nothing to do with Enron and everything to do with commiserating with other like-minded writers and sharing our "epic" battles…venting is good, right?

Well, this session was much more enlightening, amusing, and cathartic than I could have ever imagined. The first thing our hosts Elizabeth Rogers (consultant extraordinaire) and Jerry Franklin (technical writer) told us was "It's Not You. It's Microsoft." Okay, this is not a newsflash, but it does feel good when someone actually says it...sniff.

Elizabeth started off by telling us that with every release of Word (since 95), Microsoft had changed its native file format to the latest flavour of the day. It started with binary on 97, then off to HTML in 2000, XML in 2002 (XP) and finally an entirely new style of XML in 2003. No wonder porting Word documents between versions can leave your head spinning like the unfortunate little girl in The Exorcist (and yes, I swear I've come close to spewing green bile a couple of times!). And in case you missed her point, Elizabeth brought a Lego tower, which yes, was in pieces by the time she passed it through several people. Hello? Anyone taping this for Bill and his crew?!

Elizabeth's advice? DON'T ROUNDTRIP DOCUMENTS between versions, but if you must, strip out all the formatting when going between versions—and copy all but the LAST paragraph mark (which contains all the document formatting information particular to that specific version of Word—the "bad stuff") and paste it into a NEW document. Oh, and turn off all the automatic formatting in Word, and for goodness sake, don't use the "automagic" toolbar buttons—they don't work either and can also lead you unwittingly down the path to corruption. This I knew, but it still felt good to know it wasn't just me...

Oh, and then we talked about numbered lists. I was ready for the heated discussions and expletives, but thankfully Jerry got right to the point and said , '"yeah, this doesn't work either, but here's how to tame the beast." He then went on to provide very detailed instructions on what to do and more importantly what NOT to do when incorporating lists into your documents. It was poetry to me—and I could not even begin to do it justice with the few lines I have left (yes, Debbie, I am wrapping up—see?).

So, check it out for yourself—here are the links to the presentation:

http://www.stc.org/52ndConf/sessionMaterial/dataShow.asp?ID=233

...and the Jerry's numbered "to do" list:

http://www.stc.org/52ndConf/sessionMaterial/dataShow.asp?ID=234

It is really worth the trip to the STC web site, and, for that matter, the STC conference if you can swing it—and who knew, I actually learned something besides it really does rain a lot in Seattle. Next year the conference is in Las Vegas, sequins optional. See you there!

About Fei Min Lorente

Fei Min is back in the Waterloo area after graduating from UW and spending 10 years in Calgary. She is currently working at Dspfactory Ltd., running her own business called Articulated Concepts on the side, and happy to get involved in STC business after the dust settled from the Big Move. When she's not doing technical writing or family stuff, Fei Min fills in the spare minutes with scrap booking.

About Margie Yundt

Margie is a senior member in our local STC chapter and has been kicking around the Kitchener-Waterloo/Guelph area since...well, forever it seems. She is a technical writer at heart and enjoys mentoring her kids in the Art of Plain English. She lives in Guelph with her family and enjoys a daily commute into Waterloo to join her many co-workers at Research In Motion.