You can lock it down. We've done something similar where I work--created a
Word template with the styles named the same way as in our Frame template,
and then locked the Word template to prevent on-the-fly formatting. The
engineers vacillate between loving it (everything's already set up! yay!)
and
Nice to hear you're not going to make that common mistake.
Supposedly you can lock down Word templates these days to restrict
styles to a defined list. I'll believe it when I see it.
On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Stephen O'Brien
wrote:
>
> Your answers actually helped me nudge an existing p
I recommend...
- Creating a simple Word template - if Word is their tool of choice -
which will make it easy to import their content into Frame.
- Provide some very brief documentation on how to use this template
(use the styles, keep it plain, don't worry about ToCs, and so
Letting the engineers write within guidelines works for me. I am the sole
technical writer in the company. I also installed and manage two wikis -
one is a mirror image of suitable parts of the internal one containing
material suitable for the outside world.
Simon North
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 6:
these documents.
Ann Z
-Original Message-
From: framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-boun...@lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Helen Borrie
Sent: Tuesday, October 08, 2013 7:43 PM
To: Frame Users
Subject: Re: Engineers as authors
At 03:26 a.m. 8/10/2013, Stephen O'
At 03:26 a.m. 8/10/2013, Stephen O'Brien wrote:
>Hi,
>
>A few mechanical engineers have been asked, as part of their varied workload,
>to author certain documents in English (How To, Webinars, software essentials)
>in the near future.
>
>Working with authors who are not formally trained is a n
To begin with, if at all possible, I'd recommend you give each engineer
you will be working with an outline of each document you'd like
written. The outline should include:
1. Description of the target reader.
2. General description of the document.
3. List of topics/subtopics in outline form
Working with railway engineers in the UK, I'd have to agree with Matt.
Your biggest challenge is going to get the engineers to adopt brevity, or minimalism as we sometimes call it.
You will need to define a level of assumed knowledge in your audi
That's a proven approach. If you're going to do that, you should look
into using a wiki.
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 7:26 AM, Stephen O'Brien wrote:
>
>Or, maybe the role of the engineers should be to write rough content
> within guidelines (get the ideas and workflows on paper), and my team of
IMO you'll have more success and happier times if you take the latter
route. They'll never need to know FrameMaker and may resent having to learn
it.
OTOH showing them some of the principles of tech writing shows them that
there is more to our profession than transcription and formatting. A lot of
I think the first step is to determine the value proposition of the product.
Then determine how much of that value must come from the engineers, and how
much your group can provide. From there the responsibilities should shake out
on their own. This may be a negotiation, but I think it's the
riter
T (1) 418.688.2061
-Message d'origine-
De : Milan Davidović [mailto:milan.li...@gmail.com]
Envoyé : Monday, October 07, 2013 12:45 PM
À : Stephen O'Brien
Cc : Frame Users (framers@lists.frameusers.com)
Objet : Re: Engineers as authors
It looks as though the documentation
It looks as though the documentation they create has the potential to
reduce the time they spend on those tasks. Aside from being "open" to
the new responsibilities, do they see how it benefits them? Or do they
simply see more work?
--Milan Davidović
Sent from my Yost 10
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at
nvoyé : Monday, October 07, 2013 11:07 AM
À : Stephen O'Brien
Cc : Frame Users (framers@lists.frameusers.com)
Objet : Re: Engineers as authors
How are the engineers responding to this?
--Milan Davidović
Sent from my Yost 10
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Stephen O'Brien
mailto:sobr...@
Training engineers in tech comm tools is usually about as effective as training tech comms in the software tools the engineers use--that is, it's not generally effective.I recommend the engineers use whatever tool they're most comfortable with (Word) and you provide a template and train them in use
How are the engineers responding to this?
--Milan Davidović
Sent from my Yost 10
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Stephen O'Brien wrote:
> A few mechanical engineers have been asked, as part of their varied
> workload, to author certain documents in English (How To, Webinars,
> software essen
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