Extreme documentation is an agile methodology for developing documentation in small to medium-sized teams in the face of vague or rapidly changing requirements.
#25831
AuthorIT: Tips, Articles, Presentations, etc.
Various articles, presentations, tips and hints on using AuthorIT.
Bracey, Rhonda. CyberText Consulting (2004). Resources>Documentation>Software
#25832
AuthorIT: What's it All About? 
As other Help authoring tools (HATs) fall by the wayside or the scuttlebutt about their demise gets stronger, one HAT that continually gets favourable mention is AuthorIT. Maybe you've heard about it, but don't know what it is or how it is different from traditional HATs. In this article, I cover some of the main features of AuthorIT so you'll have enough information to investigate further.
Bracey, Rhonda. CyberText Consulting (2004). Resources>Documentation>Software
#10348
Authority and Audience-Centered Writing Strategies: Sexism in 19th-century Sewing Machine Manuals 
This article examines audience-centered writing strategies in two very early sewing machine manuals and considers the interplay between such strategies and sexism in technical writing. It considers the difference between non-sexist and gender-neutral writing, and concludes that avoiding sexism in technical writing is difficult at best—and perhaps impossible—in any society that assigns work (and correspondingly, technologies) for use according to the gender of the user.
Durack, Katherine T. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>History>Documentation
#14837
Automating Development Tasks for a Large-Scale Help System
Although tools like eHelp's® RoboHELP® Classic can speed up and streamline the process of creating help topics, there are still many repetitive tasks needed to build a WinHelp system that supports a large, integrated application. This article summarizes one of the techniques that Fredrickson Communications used to automate the process of developing online help topics. Once the underlying structure and macros were in place, we were able to generate hundreds of help topics at the rate 15-20 per minute.
Lindsay, Bill. Frederickson Communications (2002). Design>Documentation>Single Sourcing>Adobe RoboHelp
#24649
Automating Documentation Generation
The advent of automatic generation tools, that could automatically generate the information was a major step in the creation of more accurate documentation and it held the promise of saving time and money.
Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2004). Articles>Documentation
#28153
Automating Production with WebWorks AutoMap
WebWorks AutoMap is an extremely useful tool for performing unattended documentation builds. Out of the box, AutoMap can generate reasonable documents. By adding the power of scripting, the results can be amazing.
Bate, Simon. Carolina Communique (2006). Articles>Documentation>Software>Word Processing
#26857
Automation Techniques in Documentation
Data, which is readily available at the click of a mouse, is the buzzword in today’s world of rapid technological advancements. Looking at it for the first time, it may seem that the easy availability of data leaves no room for automation techniques, but as a matter of fact the process of documentation is clearly witnessing a sharp inclination towards automation. Though these automation techniques are already in place, it would take some time before they could be accepted by the masses.
Wadhwa, Vikas. International Journal for Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Documentation>EPSS
#31702
Avoid the SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Documentation Nightmare With These Five Tips
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been called the most comprehensive reform of corporate law since the Securities Exchange Act was passed in 1934. The effects of SOX are far reaching. Its provisions govern actions by management, audit committees, and boards of directors of public companies. Like it or not, Sarbanes-Oxley is here to stay. Its impact on IT departments is major and growing. The reaction of many IT groups is to document everything in sight in an attempt to cover themselves. In the end, this can be counter-productive, expensive and wasteful.
D'Amico, Vin. IT World Canada (2006). Articles>Documentation>Regulatory Writing
#14416
Balancing Act: Keeping Your Screen Movies Small and Beautiful
Screen recordings are a valuable tool for enhancing training, tutorials, manuals and websites. Companies use this technique to produce streaming and downloadable content. The recording tools are readily available and affordable. In this article, we explore some techniques, tips and tricks for recording sound, mouse movement and happenings from your screen to an AVI file. We will talk in both general terms and use specific examples. The examples pertain to HyperCam, a downloadable screen recording application from Hyperionics Technology. Like most screen recording applications, HyperCam captures the action from your Windows screen -- including cursor movements and sound -- and saves it to an AVI movie file.
Rice, William H. IV. WilliamRice.com (2002). Design>Documentation>Multimedia>Screencasting
#24913
Balancing Paper and Online: Integrating CD-ROM into Document Libraries
A panel of industry experts provides an overview of the CD-ROM publishing process—and its business issues, for technical communicators who are responsible for implementing CD-ROM publishing in their organizations. The panel will also discuss guidelines for integrating print and CD-ROM documents into a complete user support library, while still gaining the economies of CD-ROM publishing.
Gale, John, Stephanie L. Rosenbaum and Pamela Sansbury. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>CD ROM
#30347
Barriers and Approaches to Reviewing Documentation
This article discusses some important issues in implementing a software documentation review process. If you are part of a small development organization and have few reviewer resources available, you may have to improvise techniques for providing the services and procedures suggested here.
Boston Broadside (1997). Articles>Documentation>Editing>Collaboration
#31107
Baselining Documentation on a Wiki
The dynamic nature of wikis can cause a few headaches when you need to baseline documentation that's on a wiki to correspond with the release of your product. This blog post looks at some ways in which you can try baselining wiki content.
DMN Communications (2008). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>Wikis
#20122
The first time you create a Windows Help file can be very confusing. This paper should help reduce confusion by explaining the basic WinHelp concepts and components, and then walking you through the procedure.
Van Sant, Carol J. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Online>Help
#18150
Beginning a Documentation Project
Starting a documentation project is like opening a box filled with puzzle pieces and trying to figure out if you have all the right pieces for the right picture without knowing how many pieces make up the puzzle and what the picture looks like.
#26975
Behringer Multitrack Audio Mixer
Introduces how to perform multimedia audio mixing and editing using a Behringer multitrack mixer.
Pratt, Andrew and Dave Long. Studio for New Media (2004). Articles>Documentation>Multimedia>Audio
#19529
The Benefits of a Job Well Done 
A parable about the lives of a high-tech technical writing team. Ken puts his twenty-five years as a technical writer to good use in this fictional work about four people hired to write manuals for Xoom-tek. In the chapter excerpted, Ken takes a humorous look at RIFs and downsizings.
Wisman, Ken. TECHWR-L (2003). Humor>Documentation>Software
#18749
Benefits of Using a Professional to Write User Documentation
Studies have shown organisations value the following benefits: overall organisation, the sales team, and documentation meets the customer's requirements.
Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Writing>Professionalism>Documentation
#15004
The Best of Both Worlds: Combining Usability Testing and Documentation Projects
Describes two cases in which usability testing and documentation projects were performed in conjunction with one other. It describes how usability testing affected the design and content of the documentation and how follow-on usability studies added significant new data not revealed in the initial tests.
Kantner, Laurie, Stephanie L. Rosenbaum and Connie Leas. Tec-Ed, Inc. (1997). Articles>Documentation>Usability
#28027
Best Practice Flare: High Definition PDF
Having introduced the concept of high definition PDF's output straight from Flare's source files with minimal post-production, we can now start to dig into the technologies that are used to produce it.
Tech Write Tips (2006). Articles>Documentation>Software>Madcap Flare
#30729
Best Practices for Agile/Lean Documentation
Documentation is an important part of agile software development projects, but unlike traditionalists who often see documentation as a risk reduction strategy, agilists typically see documentation as a strategy which increases overall project risk and therefore strive to be as efficient as possible when it comes to documentation. Agilists write documentation when that's the best way to achieve the relevant goals, but there often proves to be better ways to achieve those goals than writing static documentation. This article summarizes common "best practices" which agilists have adopted with respect to documentation.
Ambler, Scott W. Agile Modeling (2001). Resources>Documentation>Agile
#22344
Review: Best Practices in Policies and Procedures
Page's book makes the first attempt to open the door to examples of tables of contents of P&P from a variety of organizations. He also makes an admirable attempt to position and show the P&P analyst/writer as more than a scribe, as a leader who adds value by formulating best P&P practices in collaboration with others for their organization.
Urgo, Raymond E. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Documentation>Policies and Procedures
#31148
Betriebsanleitungen für Anlagen 
Der Normenunterausschuss NATG-F des Deutschen Instituts für Normung e.V. ist derzeit damit befasst, Regeln zur Erstellung von Betriebsanleitungen für Anlagen zu erarbeiten.
Doculine (2002). (German) Articles>Documentation>Writing>Technical Writing
#19988
Beyond End-User Documentation: Opportunities for Technical Communicators
A large number of people in the technical communication field create end user documentation; therefore, many people seem to believe that technical writing is synonymous with writing end user documentation. On the contrary, creating end user documentation is only one of many roles that a professional technical communicator can perform. In this paper, we will describe several roles for technical communicators.
Vaughn, Joan E. and Katie Walton. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Documentation>TC
#21479
Beyond Help: Making Help a Core Component of a Performance Support System
With the advent of HTML Help and the ability to embed Help directly inside an application, there's been an increased interest in creating Help systems that are seamlessly integrated with their host applications. By blurring the line between the application and the Help that supports it, and by developing Help that automatically responds to user actions, application developers and Help authors now have the ability to develop true electronic performance support systems.
Wexler, Steven S. ComponentOne (1998). Articles>Documentation>Online>Help
#29987
Beyond Software Manuals and On-line Help: Interactive Help
Software user guides have traditionally provided assistance when the user requested help. Context-sensitivity enabled help systems to predict the most appropriate topic to present. For Windows applications, the move from Microsoft WinHelp to the new Microsoft HTML Help format allows user instructions to be presented in the same window as the application. This offers technical authors some extraordinary opportunities to provide intelligent, predictive, interactive help without the user having to request it. In this paper, we will explore one of the first such interactive help systems (for the Archivist e-mail archiving software), and see where the technology is moving.
Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2003). Articles>Documentation>Interaction Design>Help
