#25813
Demystifying Software Globalization 
Representing a growing segment of the translation industry, software globalization (G11N) remains shrouded in mystery to many. What is Globalization? G11N ensures availability of a software product in languages besides the language of origin, traditionally US English. It is driven by huge revenue opportunities outside the Anglophone world for software companies and translators alike. This presentation will introduce both the basic concept of globalization and how it involves the translator, in particular. In this paper we will describe the process from early design and coding to release in the global marketplace.
McKethan, Kenneth A. (Sandy), Jr. and Graciela White. Translation Journal (2005). Articles>Language>Localization>Software
#21617
Review: DENIM, del Lápiz a la Web
El diseño de sitios web suele empezar con bosquejos hechos con papel y lápiz. Denim convierte directamente los diagramas que salen de una tableta gráfica o del dibujo con el ratón en prototipos de sitios web funcionales.
Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2003). (Spanish) Articles>Reviews>Software>Web Design
#27430
Shows how to simulate a depth of field effect using a filter.
Kloskowski, Matt. Planet Photoshop (2006). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Adobe Photoshop
#31150
Der Weg zum absoluten PDF-Standard in der Technischen Dokumentation
Kein Wunder müssen Technischen Redakteure die ganze Zeit Druckdaten aufbereiten, wenn jede Druckerei ein anderes Datenformat verlangt. Eine Lösung musste her. Ein Standard. Und so ist auch PDF/X-3 ein Thema in der Technischen Dokumentation.
TECOM (2003). (German) Articles>Documentation>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22500
A page with links to facilitate users who build website with Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash.
Ellertson, Anthony. Iowa State University (2003). Design>Web Design>Software>Flash
#20178
When you're working with complex data, a table may be your best option. Often, a logical series of rows and col-umns can communicate more clearly than paragraphs. Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 introduces a robust table feature that makes it easy to line up those rows and columns—and to format them in striking ways. Here we show you how you can make an easy-to-read table while using the graphical power of InDesign to integrate it into the style of your document.
Cole, Tim. Mac Design Magazine (2003). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign
#23263
Designing Better HTML Authoring Tools
A collection of proposed new tools and features for adding structure to the Web.
Hoffman, Michael. Hypertext Navigation. Articles>Web Design>User Interface>Software
#20481
Designing Text to Flow Around Objects
Wrapping text around objects—from basic shapes or frames to images with clipping paths—can give any publication a unique look and feel. In this tutorial, you’ll learn several ways to work with text wrap in Adobe InDesign® to achieve the look you want.
#26344
D:Photoshop strives to be a well-written source of news, information and techniques for intermediate and advanced users of Photoshop. Users who have a few years of Photoshop experience and a good grasp of its basic tools and tactics will benefit from this ongoing source of production techniques, step-by-step tutorials, reviews of upcoming Photoshop-related products and industry news. There are four sections to D:Photoshop: Techniques, which includes articles on specific Photoshop tools and techniques and how they affect an image. Tutorials, which include step-by-step applications of Photoshop tools and techniques that can unlock your productivity and capabilities in real-world production situations. Reviews, thorough commentary on the Photoshop products hitting the market this moment, including books, videos and other media, hardware and software. News on current events in the Photoshop industry.
Schultz, Jeremy. Designorati (2005). Resources>Software>Graphic Design>Adobe Photoshop
#26468
Desktop Printing with QuarkXPress
Have you ever wondered why, no matter how much time you spend trying to find an option for it in QuarkXPress, you just cannot get that picture to print the way you want it? Be happy, or may be not, because it is not that you are overlooking the right options in the program. The option just does not exist in all versions of QuarkXPress prior to version 6.
Bruno, Elisabetta. About.com. Design>Document Design>Software>QuarkXPress
#24676
Whatever the subject of lists I follow, two basic questions usually come up about every three months. Usually the person posting the question has to make a decision between: Pagemaker or Quark (and often FrameMaker), or Macintosh or PC.
Haugen, Diane. Document Design (2001). Articles>Document Design>Software
#22774
How can I tell if JBIG2 compression was used on my PDF file?
Rosenthol, Leonard. PDFzone (2004). Articles>Information Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#30371
Style checkers are software programs designed as writing tools. Despite their popularity in both academic and industrial settings, the effectiveness and advisability of using the technology is still unproven. A main issue is the ability of users to determine whether the program's suggestions are useful and to ignore inappropriate advice. Freshmen composition students, beginning technical writing students, and advanced technical writing students were asked to mark all suggestions made by RightWriter 4.0 as 'useful,' 'wrong,' or 'ignored.' Results show that all students ignored approximately 50% of the suggestions; however, freshman writers perceived a larger percentage of the suggestions that they ignored to be wrong rather than just not useful.
Moosally, Michelle J. and Roland D. Nerd. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Research>Education>Software
#18957
Distiller or Writer for Web Docs? 
Acrobat Distiller will always produce better quality PDF's than PDFWriter - which is one reason why PDFWriter wasn't part of the standard installation in Acrobat 5 and is completely gone for Acrobat 6. Both tools add metadata to PDF files - PDFWriter only uses the old 'InfoDict' method, while Distiller does both that and the new XML-based metadata.
Rosenthol, Leonard. PDFzone (2003). Design>Publishing>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#22780
Can somebody explain what the process of distilling is -- in simple terms?
#29286
The DITA Open Toolkit is an implementation of the OASIS DITA Technical Committee's specification for Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) DTDs and Schemas. The Toolkit transforms DITA content (maps and topics) into deliverable formats.
Sourceforge (2007). Resources>Software>XML>DITA
#31159
DocBook and DITA Editors: Is Their Future Online?
Thanks to my Google News Alert service, I recently discovered some on-demand XML Editors supporing DITA. While Salesforce democratized software on-demand in the CRM market, I am still perplexed on the future of on-demand pure play software. So let's see first what makes on-demand software, also known as Saas (Software as a Service), so attractive nowadays. I see five compelling reasons.
Talbot, Fabrice. LiveTechDocs (2008). Articles>Information Design>Software>DITA
#24990
FrameMaker is the industry standard for writing book-length documents. It is a powerful program capable of creating books of well over a thousand pages. The learning curve for the program is significant. FrameMaker is a much different animal than Microsoft Word and other word processors.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2004). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe FrameMaker
#24988
Document Hack (A Technical Writer's Journal): The Acrobat and the Illustrator
Using Acrobat, you can make minor edits to a PDF file, but Acrobat documents are very sensitive. Typing a single character can throw several lines off, destroy tables and cause all sort of other troubles. Alternately, it can be relatively uneventful and painless. You will not know until you type in that character.
Hewitt, John. Writer's Resource Center (2004). Articles>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#18822
Document Layout Concepts (Frames and All That)
The primary reason to use Framemaker is the power that it offers in managing long and possibly technically complex documents. And while detailed control of the formatting of every paragraph and character is important, the overarching concern is overall structure and layout on a document- or book-wide basis. As the product's name announces, at the heart of FrameMaker's structure and layout paradigm is the 'Frame'. Yet I found the user documentation on the actual subject of frames to be perplexingly opaque. Frames are mentioned here and there, and what is described is not incorrect. But nowhere in the user docs is there a concise and complete discussion of this central FrameMaker feature -- which tends to stall efforts to actually get started on using FrameMaker in a productively-planned manner. Indeed, it is tempting to speculate that the FM learning curve is infamously steep precisely because this conceptual core is so ill illuminated. So, determined to dispell the fog (at least for me!), I resorted to studying the very helpful Programmers' Reference and Guide, and built a MIF-Browser tool to get to the bottom of the matter. Herewith is an effort to clarify what to me seem the essentials needed for productive use of FrameMaker, condensed in one place.
Wideman, Graham. WidemanOne. Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe FrameMaker
#20306
A Document Management Case Study: QLD Dept of Housing
How a new spin on document management software helped revolutionise customer service at the Queensland Department of Housing.
Hambly, Natalie. Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Documentation>Software>Government
#22356
Document Setup in Adobe InDesign CS
In this topic, you will set up a new document in Adobe InDesign CS.
#21025
Documenting Entertainment Software: The Mixed Challenge of Simplicity and Sophistication
The challenges of documenting entertainment software are in many ways the challenges of all technical communicators. We strive to make the interface intuitive and the documentation interesting and easy-to-read. Although the nature of the world of entertainment may suggest that our task is simple, the breadth of our audience and the depth of our goals makes it more sophisticated than it looks. We must be as imaginative as our users, recognize the emerging dimensions of multimedia, and create with the constraints of low retail costs, small teams, and fast-paced deadlines.
Guthrie, Lynn Frances. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Documentation>Software
#27574
Does a Good User Interface Obviate the Need for Documentation?
This question was raised on a programmer's group recently and I was intrigued. The programmer's point was that with many web applications these days there is no print documentation distributed to end users, and even if it existed, many users won't read it although this makes me wonder who's buying all those how-to books I see in the bookstore. The programmer suggested that applications should be designed without documentation and wondered about the impact that would have on design.
Sprezzatura Systems (2002). Articles>Documentation>User Interface>Software
#25922
There are a number of ways in which you can use drag and drop to get content in and out of InDesign. Here are my favorites: If you ever get a lot of content for a layout delivered to you in a folder full of images, logos, text files, etc., there's a fast and easy way to get the files into InDesign that will enable you to avoid placing them one by one.
Cole, Tim. Mac Design Magazine (2005). Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe InDesign
