Living Documentation: The Future of Technical Writing

Living documentation is documentation that does not cease to be developed until the product ceases to develop. Living documentation can be produced at any time in multiple formats. The book, web pages and online help would continue to be developed as long as that development either solves inaccuracy or increases product usability and customer satisfaction.

Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center. Articles>Publishing>Documentation>Online

Moving into XML Functionality: The Combined Digital Dictionaries of Buddhism and East Asian Literary Terms  

Compilation of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (DDB) began with the realization of the dearth of adequate lexicographical and other reference works in the English language for the textual scholar of East Asian Buddhism in particular, and East Asian philosophy and religion in general. The (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) CJK-English Dictionary (CJK-E) began soon after. I decided, during my first Buddhist and Confucian/Taoist texts readings courses, to save everything I looked up, and have continued that practice to the present, through the course of studying scores of classical texts. Although the content of these two lexicons is presently being supplemented by other interested parties, the terms that I have been compiling serve as the major portion of the work.

Muller, Charles and Michael Beddow. Journal of Digital Information (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>XML

Moving to Electronic Delivery of Documentation  

Includes information about the fundamentals of electronic documentation, case studies, what to expect, how to research, identify, and implement a process for moving from an exclusively hard copy development and delivery process to electronic documentation development and delivery. While anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can potentially view electronic documentation, this white paper also addresses globalization issues related to the development, delivery, and use of electronic documentation.

Robertson, Angela and Sandy Storey. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online

On Beyond Help: Interface Design Paradigms for Online Documents  

In the world of printed documentation, there are many different programs, with different ways of solving the problem of editing and layout, but they all produce the same product in the end--a printed page. The online world can be bewildering even to experienced authors, since not only the authoring approach but the end result can vary so widely. This session is a look at some of the different types of online systems and how they affect both interface and document design.

Quesenbery, Whitney. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Online Flipping: Examination of the Digital FlipViewer

This article examines the usability of FlipViewer software for digital FlipBooks. The FlipViewer software allows users to read online documents in a three-dimensional e-book format simulates a paper document. Participants performed 11 tasks with a FlipBook and their performance was evaluated. Some tasks were difficult for participants to complete, however, participants were satisfied overall with their experience using FlipViewer® and 100% indicated that they would recommend the product to others.

Hull, Spring S. Usability News (2005). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Online Vs. Hard-Copy Marketing Material: Both Have a Place

The World Wide Web, the panacea of the so-called information age, was supposed to transform the way we shop, are entertained, and get informed. If the web was supposed to be so great, why are we still reading so much information on paper?

Zvalo, Peter. Writer's Block (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online

Pages, Books, the Web, and Virtual Reality: A Response to Negroponte's "Books Without Pages"

Inclusion of Nicholas Negroponte's paper on 'Books Without Pages' (1979) in this Journal requires explanation, as the paper does not concern itself directly with computer documentation. However, the implications of its assertions and questions ultimately involve all of us who teach, practice, and learn about documenting computer programs. As we leave paper and move to other media to deliver our instructions to users, we are faced with the same questions that Negroponte was asking over 15 years ago. Just as the MIT researchers were doing, we look for new metaphors and new ways to define the relationship between our 'readers' and the information we are providing to them. We search for that perfect controlling metaphor that will clarify how our communications in new media work, and how we can apply some sense and some structure to them, a new 'grammar', if you will, for our books without pages.

Dicks, R. Stanley. Journal of Computer Documentation (1996). Articles>Publishing>Online

Personal Publication and Public Attention

What makes weblogs a genre different from the autobiography, the diary, the researcher's journal or any other pre-Internet writing? While weblogs have many non-digital predecessors, blogs cannot live outside of the computer. They are ergodic texts (Aarseth 1997), and demand the assistance of technology in order to be created and used.

Mortensen, Torill Elvira. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Publishing>Online>Blogging

Personalising Electronic Books    

The paper addresses how hyperdocuments, accessible via electronic books (e-books) which are read using the World Wide Web, can be endowed with features that personalise the interaction process that takes place between the reader and the e-book. A novel, abstract approach to modelling the personalisation of hyperdocuments is introduced. This approach aims to make available features that allow readers to interact with these documents in a manner much closer to that with paper-based documents. The research is based on a formal characterisation of personalisable hyperlink-based interaction. This characterisation is unique in formally modelling a rich set of user-initiated personalisation actions that allow users to come closer to satisfying their specific, often dynamic, information retrieval goals.

Ohene-Djan, James and Alvaro A.A. Fernandes. Journal of Digital Information (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online

Practical Lessons for Small-Scale Web Publishers  

Electronic publishing through the World Wide Web offers tantalizing opportunities for small-scale operators such as individuals in academic or other non-profit institutions trying to reach a wide audience. Early users of the Web quickly recognized it as a ground-breaking medium for electronic publications. By making it easy to display and read texts online, the Web became a platform for materials that were too specialized, too ephemeral or too experimental for publication as traditional books or articles. However, the recent explosive growth and widespread commercialization of the Web have eroded or at least marginalized small-scale electronic publications. Successful small-scale Web publishing is still possible, but that success must be preceded by careful planning and goal-setting.

Sowards, Steven W. Journal of Electronic Publishing (1999). Articles>Publishing>Online

Print to Online: Conflicting Tales of Transition    

This is a success story of how a large, high-tech service support organization made the transition from print to online documentation in both CD-ROM and Web media. But this is also a cautionary tale of the damaging drawbacks resulting from that changeover. The co-existence of two such very different evaluations, both based on accurate reporting about common products and circumstances, is emblematic of the challenges that new technologies can bring to information developers. The success story, told by the publications group responsible for the transition, is focused on new features and reduced production expenses. The cautionary tale highlights larger issues of process, product suitability, and indirect costs that affect both users and the company, including the publications group itself. The instructive value of considering two such versions of a single case history is in developing a fuller view of how technology advances can lead to unintended consequences for information developers.

Rehling, Louise. Technical Communication Online (1999). Articles>Content Management>Publishing>Online

The Processed Book  

The 'processed book' is about content, not technology, and contrasts with the 'primal book'; the latter is the book we all know and revere: written by a single author and viewed as the embodiment of the thought of a single individual. The processed book, on the other hand, is what happens to the book when it is put into a computerized, networked environment. To process a book is more than simply building links to it; it also includes a modification of the act of creation, which tends to encourage the absorption of the book into a network of applications, including but not restricted to commentary. Such a book typically has at least five aspects: as self-referencing text; as portal; as platform; as machine component; and, as network node. An interesting aspect of such processing is that the author's relationship to his or her work may be undermined or compromised; indeed, it is possible that author attribution in the networked world may go the way of copyright. The processed book, in other words, is the response to romantic notions of authorship and books. It is not a matter of choice (as one can still write an imitation, for example, of a Victorian novel today) but an inevitable outcome of inherent characteristics of digital media.

Esposito, Joseph J. First Monday (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online

Publishing is Dead  

What does the internet mean for Traditional Publishing? It means death. Not one to pull punches, Mike Scantlebury expounds his theory in a humorous and direct way.

Scantlebury, Mike. FreeIQ (2007). Articles>Publishing>Online>Video

Publishing Newsletters on Paper or Online: A Profile of How Three Chapter Editors Did It

The switch to web delivery meant that we no longer had to restrict the newsletter to black and white, and we were no longer limited to four pages (a folio) or a multiple of four pages. An end to the cost constraints imposed by printing also allowed more creative formatting and the use of color.

Wilson, Scott. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>Newsletters

Quality Control in Scholarly Publishing on the Web  

As scholars and researchers, we are often called upon to separate the high-quality materials from the bad. What are the methods by which quality control is established and what are the indicators that allow a user to recognize the good materials?

Arms, William Y. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2002). Articles>Publishing>Research>Online

Reality Bytes -What the Information Superhighway Won't Deliver  

Today, information technology has deluged us with not only a torrential flood of information but also a multitude of ways in which to display, package, and disseminate this information. With the proliferation of computer technology and the vigorously-and somewhat fanatically-promoted paperless and faceless virtual society of the fiture, we are faced with somewhat frightening challenges.

Dahm, Rea Etta M. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Rock, Paper, Stone: The Biz Stone Guide to Independent Publishing

People have things to say. Maybe you're one of them, struggling to get a voice through the bottleneck that is big publishing. Maybe you're a talented individual who would write more if you had a forum. Maybe you're an expert in certain areas but all that insightful content stays trapped within you because you don't have an outlet. Oh, but you do. Today's Web is fertile soil for independent publishing. Not only is it easy to get your voice out there, but your voice is also heard, acknowledged, and in many cases responded to by interested, intelligent readers who have discovered your work because they sought it out and are happy to have found it. This low barrier to publishing gets you writing, and that's important.

Stone, Biz. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online

Scientific Articles in Internet Homepages: Assumptions Upon Lay Audiences    

This article studies a set of scientific/technical articles published in Internet homepages. Focusing upon current trends on genre theory and the functional approach deployed by Halliday and Martin [1], linguistic features and schematic structure are analyzed in relation to more standard genres. The structural analysis suggests that these kind of texts imaginatively realize and assume the standpoint and main tenets of a lay audience that just consumes specific genres, most being analogous to the persuasive, manipulative, amusement-oriented genres of TV news stories, tabloids, and commercials. It is pondered that much of the "technological utopianism" (term used by Kling [2] surrounding the ever increasingly standardized Internet discourse turns the Internet into a productive vehicle to sustain technoscience as modern myth by spreading and forging that utopian imagery into the audience's consciousness, and that scientists are taking fruitful advantage of the utopian, futurist, and often sensationalist accounts of the Internet as a formidable frame to advertise themselves and the deeds achieved in their laboratories.

Gonzalez-Pueyo, Isabel and Alicia Redrado. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Research>Publishing>Online

Review: Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age  

If you like to think about your work philosophically, or even if you don't, David M. Levy's book tackles some of the big questions in our profession: paper versus digital, reading versus viewing, libraries versus the Web, brick and mortar schools versus distance education. And the great thing about the book is that he thinks you don't have to choose between one or the other in each of these apparent dichotomies; in fact, what's needed is a balance between the two.

Crawley, Charles R. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Publishing>Online

The Soundproof Book: Exploration of Rights Conflict and Access to Commercial EBooks for People with Disabilities

This document will lay out the heated rights controversy concerning the use of synthetic speech -- Text-To-Speech (TTS) as it relates to the use of eBook publications by persons with disabilities.

Kerscher, George and Jim Fruchterman. OeB (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Survey on Electronic Book Features  

While people may not want a radical departure from the paper book, they want to do things with electronic books that are not possible with paper books. For example, they want to 'personalize' their electronic book reading experience by changing the fonts, typefaces, and margins, moving illustrations and tables around the page, sizing images differently than text, and so on. In effect, people want to manage the presentation of information within the electronic book. This raises an issue because not only do people want to manage presentation, they want to add content to electronic books they purchased. For example, they may read a related article and want to add that content to the book. Adding content should not be viewed as simply creating an annotation or note but adding content that becomes part of the book and incorporated into the table of contents and index.

Henke, Harold. OeB (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

Technical Aspect of Next Generation Digital Library Project

Digital libraries are one of the central and most compelling applications for the 21st century's highly information-based societies. The development of such system needs three kind of technologies. First one is a system architecture that defines overall system structure and provides common services and interfaces. Second one is individual technologies that include search technology, retrieval technology, contents entry technology and so on. Third one is an integration technology that enables to combine individual technology as a system on the system architecture. The system architecture that plays a central role should be designed to have a interoperability to the international standards and de fact standards. Because digital libraries have to be open and inter-connectable.

Mukaiyama, Hiroshi. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Thinking in Pixels: An Editing System for Electronic Texts    

On-line publication alters the relationship between editor and writer, creating a potentially more collaborative and fluid text. This article explores implications of increased publication options and examines conceptual distinctions among Fixed-Format, Electronic, and Meta-media Editors. We propose a keyboard editing/commenting technique that will work across platforms and software programs and in every mode of electronic communication including simple e-mail. This ASCII based system uses only four symbols in various combinations to convey all of the print editor's marks and also allows the editor or reader to insert comments in the immediate context. The result is increased efficiency and flexibility for writer and editor or teacher and student.

Kuhlenschmidt, Sally, Charmaine Mosby, Sally Kuhlenschmidt and Charmaine Mosby. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online>Methods

Time Well Spent: The Magazine Publishing Industry's Online Niche    

This article compares the uses of the print and online versions of the same magazine by its readership. Combining surveys of the readership and commercial data from the publisher and web designer, the study examines how one magazine has developed an online publication for its readers. Group Leisure is a niche magazine which has been in print for over a decade and online for two years. This article analyses the usage of the magazine in terms of age, gender and modal occupation of its readers and examines how their understanding of spending and saving time on the magazine underpins their perceptions of its value. The results and conclusions of this research have relevance to the publishing industry and to the study of online journalism.

Ingham, Deena and Alexis Weedon. Convergence (2008). Articles>Publishing>Online>Assessment

Towards a General Theory of the Digital Library

Debate about the digital library is clouded by emotion and self-interest. Emotion plays its part because the digital library is seen by some as a threat to the book, and a threat to the book is an attack on culture itself. Self-interest enters the fray because in the instability provoked by the digital library there will be winners and losers, whether in business, or the professions. Depending on your point of view the digital library can be the end of libraries as we know them, or the salvation of libraries as we know them.

Collier, Mel. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online>Emotions