What Word Tries to Do for You  

Word performs many behind-the-scenes actions that some people hate and some people love. You already learned about AutoRecover, which saves files in the background every few minutes. Word offers three other big automated features: AutoCorrect, Smart Cut and Paste, and background spelling and grammar check.

Glenn, Walter. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Word Processing>Software>Microsoft Word

What's the Diff? Diff XML Documents

If you are handling many XML documents, sometimes you need to check the differences between two or more documents. You can perform diffs of XML documents with online and command-line tools.

O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>UNIX

Work with XML in Microsoft Access 2003

If you are a Microsoft Access user, you'll be happy to know that you can export Access 2003 data as XML.

O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>Databases>Microsoft Access

Writing, Editing, and Reviewing Documents  

OpenOffice.org Writer provides many ways to write, edit, review, and comment on documents. This chapter covers some of those techniques, plus some other tips.

Weber, Jean Hollis. O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

XHTML: The Clean Code Solution

XML continues to be a hot topic among web developers. Why? Because it delivers a standardized markup that separates display and layout code from syntax, making the creation, maintenance, and parsing of documents much easier for all involved.

Wiggin, Peter. O'Reilly and Associates (2000). Design>Web Design>XHTML

XML Basics: Reading and Writing

This chapter covers the two most important tasks in working with XML: reading it into memory and writing it out again. XML is a structured, predictable, and standard data storage format, and as such carries a price.

Ray, Erik T. and Jason McIntosh. O'Reilly and Associates (2002). Design>Information Design>Programming>XML

XML Markup and Core Concepts  

This chapter focuses on the details of XML markup. It will describe the fundamental building blocks of all XML-derived languages: elements, attributes, entities, processing instructions, and more. And I'll show you how they all fit together to make a well-formed XML document. Mastering these concepts is essential to understanding every other topic in the book, so read this chapter carefully.

Ray, Erik T. O'Reilly and Associates (2003). Design>Information Design>XML

Winning as a Tech Writer

If you need a job, then you might look for companies that have never had a professional technical writer working for them. It may require making calls or networking with friends or former co-workers. Most companies have a ton of writing to do. Usually they put off their documentation requirements and their needs have piled up. You may also find that someone such as a regulator has confronted management about insufficient documentation and they have to put a writer to work immediately.

Adelstein, Tom. O'Reilly and Associates (2007). Careers>TC>Writing>Technical Writing

Semantics Continues to Not be RDF, But Enrichment, Classification and Taxonomy

Within the realm of computational semantics, there is still a fairly broad disconnect between triple pair semantics, the use of RDF (or turtle notation) to create atomic assertions, and the realm of semantics as reflected on the web. I do not expect this to change much in 2009, save perhaps that the gulf between the two will likely just get wider.

Cagle, Kurt. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search

Essential Tools of an XML Workflow

This webcast is for those publishers who have made the decision to pursue digital channels for their content. What tools are out there? What do all those acronyms mean? How can publishers implement new strategies without disrupting current workflows? Here we explore the alphabet soup of digital publishing, sort out the tools that are most useful, and help publishers find some solid ground.

Dawson, Laura. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>Video

Writing Technical Documentation with Sphinx, Paver, and Cog

I've been working on the Python Module of the Week series since March of 2007. During the course of the project, my article style and tool chain have both evolved. I now have a fairly smooth production process in place, so the mechanics of producing a new post don't get in the way of the actual research and writing. Most of the tools are open source, so I thought I would describe the process I go through and how the tools work together.

Hellmann, Doug. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Documentation>Software>Technical Writing

Going DITA

It’s hard to go to a content management or publishing technology conference these days without there being a presentation on DITA — the Darwinian Information Typing Architecture. For the uninitiated, DITA is an XML architecture for authoring and publishing topic-based content, typically technical documentation. The brainchild of IBM, where it is used internally for many documentation projects, DITA is now an open-source standard under the aegis of OASIS.

Hondros, Constantine. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

How Many Links Are Too Many Links?

To understand how much content effluvia we're subjected to, I wanted to see how many links are on the homepage of popular websites. For example, if I go to the homepage of the Huffington Post, I see 720 links, in one shot. Then click inside to a story and you've nearly doubled that number—it ads up pretty quickly. What about the tech blogs? BoingBoing Gadgets, 514. Gizmodo, 468. Engadget 432, all on one page. And on average, fewer than 1% of the links on news sites and blogs actually point to rich content, 99% are navigation and other article headlines. Aggregation site Techmeme has a whopping 1081 links.

Bilton, Nick. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Hypertext

Free

Free software is not free - it comes with an implicit obligation that you respect the rights of its creators, and that you give something back from your use of the software, from code libraries to promotion to documentation, to the larger community. It's possible, indeed probable, that this ethos, derived by programmers and engineers to solve some very real problems, may in fact be a sound model on which to build an economy.

Cagle, Kurt. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Publishing>Writing>Micropayments

What Is Screencasting

A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It's not a new idea. The screencaster's tools—for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files—have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What's new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast.

Udell, Jon. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Documentation>Video>Screencasting

Screencasting Strategies

In general, screencasting is a three-step process: capture of audio and video, editing, and production of a compressed deliverable. Camtasia combines all three functions in a single, integrated application, but in principle they're separable. I can imagine using Camtasia (or an equivalent) for capture, Premiere (or an equivalent) for editing, and Camtasia (or an equivalent) to produce a compressed .SWF file.

Udell, Jon. O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Documentation>Video>Screencasting

Why is HTML Suddenly Interesting?

Today the HTML conversation is reborn. Standards development around HTML seems to actually have a chance of influencing user experience in the browser, and Microsoft itself is participating in the HTML 5 conversation despite still holding roughly two-thirds of the browser market. While Microsoft's market share is only slowly eroding, developer mindshare seems to have shifted decisively to the band of WHATWG upstarts, Microsoft's competitors.

St. Laurent, Simon. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Bantamweight Publishing in an Easily Plagiarised World

Bantamweight publishing is popular among those who feel brevity is a virtue. But when an entire work of art is bounded in 140 characters, even brevity has its limits. Sometimes, squeezing in a proper attribution through editing content can change the original meaning, when the edits unwillingly shift from cosmetic to substantive.

Drapeau, Mark. O'Reilly and Associates (2009). Articles>Publishing>Online>Plagiarism