questions re Structured FM7.2 to FM11

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

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questions re Structured FM7.2 to FM11

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

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Developer documentation

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

Carl,

The programmer's guide I helped to write several years ago was done with 
complete collaboration with the developers -- they were great! The project we 
were working on had an API (application programmer's interface) that we fully 
documented, along with definitions of acronyms and terms that were particular 
to our product. It is still in use today and is being updated as new features 
are added to the product.

We started with a basic introduction to the "underbelly" of the product, its 
servers, its clients, and its API. We then divided the rest of the document 
into defining, describing, and giving examples of code (lots!) for each 
specific aspect of the product that the developers had already created, were 
creating, or would have to create. This also included defining notifiers, 
listeners, triggers, and any such related events as well as our data model and 
workflow. As our product was Java-based, the APIs were derived from JavaDocs 
and were available to programmers as part of the product installation; we 
provided a pathname to each API for each of area we described.

[Note:  In the first iteration of the doc, we actually downloaded the API and 
published it, links and all. We soon discovered this wasn't used as much as we 
thought it would be (and it was a lot of work!), so we decided to save the 
trees and not include the published version, as the online version was 
available to the developers, which most seemed to prefer anyway...]

The developers I worked with were very busy but realized it was to their 
advantage to have this info documented. I tried to be as non-intrusive in their 
schedules as I could and found that recording my interviews with them helped 
enormously, both with their limited time and my cryptic notes as I sometimes 
wondered what I meant by what I'd written... [I now have a LiveScribe pen 
(www.livescribe.com) that I'd have given my eye teeth for then as it not only 
records what is being said, but it captures your notes to upload as PDF to 
share, if needed, or to "tap on some text" and hear played back what was said 
when you were writing that text. Now it even has a third-party application that 
translates your scripted notes into editable text... love it!]

That said, I could never have tackled this alone; it's the developers who must 
give you the information. Even if you're familiar with programming, there are 
too many areas that must be documented with expert information... so get it 
from the experts themselves.

Good luck!
Cheryl Dwyer
Industrial Medium Software, Inc.
McLean, VA  22102

On Jun 25, 2009, framers-request at lists.frameusers.com wrote:


Message: 1
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:50:21 -0700
From: "Carl Yorke" 
Subject: Developer documentation
To: 
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi All,

I am the lone writer in a casual-games-on-television company. I was
hired to document the platform side with Install Guides and Sys Admin
Guides which make sense to me.

Now I need to write developer documentation, which doesn't make sense to
me. I just can't seem to get an handle on what these books should look
like.

I've looked at books about how to build games, but they all seem to be
selling a particular program or technology. I haven't found any that are
decently organized or written.

If anyone has any advice, experience or sympathy, I'm open to all.

Thanks,
Carl Yorke

TAG Networks

Developer documentation

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

Printing Structured View in Frame 8

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

I tried capturing the Structured view in Frame 7.2 with SnagIt and it 
worked beautifully... you can print it from your screen capture in 
SnagIt as well, even formatting the printed pages. I have SnagIt 9.

Cheryl Dwyer
Lead Tech Writer
Industrial Medium Software, Inc.
McLean, VA? 22102

Re Checkboxes in Numbered Lists

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

Doug,

Your query... "How do I integrate a checkbox (i.e., Wingding open 
square) into the
Autonumber format code so that each step also has a check box for
indicating completion?"

I do this in a two-cell table; the first cell of a row contains the 
checkbox and the second cell of each row contains the numbered 
paragraph.

Cheryl Dwyer
Industrial Medium Software, Inc.
McLean, VA 22102
730-286-0820

Book file too big

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

I had the same problem a couple of years ago... discovered through 
trial-and-error that I had a character format (to exclude text from 
spell check) applied to a veerrry long code text passage within a 
paragraph on the page on which the application always bailed out... I 
removed the character format from that text (and other long code text 
passages on the same page) and the PDF process proceeded as it should.

Good luck hunting for your fix...

Cheryl Dwyer

PDF or Frame problem?

[dwyer...@verizon.net]

Diane,

I'm not sure if this is relevant in your case, but I have found that if I have 
a character format on even one word in a title, figure name, or table name, 
then that will render my TOC, LOF, or LOT entry with no link beyond that word. 
You might verify that this is not the case for your non-linked TOC entries. 
Just a thought...

Cheryl Dwyer
Lead Tech Writer
Industrial Medium, Inc.
McLean, VA 22102