Accelerated Authoring @ Method M

The Method M blog for technical writers, marketing staff, product managers and others who spend hours each week creating documents. This blog is dedicated to helping you work more efficiently and create better documents.

Reichman, Katriel. Method M (2007). Resources>Documentation>Technical Writing>Blogs

Hands-on XML and Round Trip HTML for Technical Communicators  

XML can simplify production of documents for print, help and web delivery. It can make document components reusable, portable between platforms and easier to maintain. XML also has a dark side. Parts of the standard are turbulent, vendors are rushing XML products to market that are not fully standard-compliant, implementation requires careful planning, and porting of legacy documents to XML is not trivial. Technical communicators can prosper by identifying the parts of XML that can be implemented immediately, by preparing documents to exploit support for XML available in new versions of Microsoft Word and Adobe FrameMaker, and by using hybrid HTML/XML for document delivery.

Reichman, Katriel. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>XML

What Managers Need to Know About DITA  

Product documentation is expensive--often, much more expensive than it needs to be. With DITA promising savings of 50% in product documentation preparation costs, and 80% in translation costs, managers need to know what DITA is and if it can work for their organization. This white paper distills the information that managers need to know about DITA.

Reichman, Katriel. Method M (2007). Articles>Documentation>Standards>DITA

Wikis Are Coming: An In-Depth Exploration of Using Wikis in Documentation

In this podcast, Katriel Reichman, a technical writer at Method M in Jerusalem, Israel, talks in-depth about how to use wikis for documentation.

Reichman, Katriel and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Presentations>Documentation>Content Management>Podcasts