Writing User Documentation

Course outline

Phil Cohen wrote and presented a course in Technical Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. If you want to use this material from the course, please contact us.

Week 3: Media and Tools

The following tools are important currently in the technical writing industry in Australia. Unfortunately, the tools landscape changes weekly, so that teaching students about particular tools is fairly pointless. Instead, I would like you to research one of the following tools (I will tell you which one), and prepare a short (20-minute) presentation to give the rest of the class. That way, you will pick up the skills you need to research any tool you come across.

The presentation should answer the following questions:

who are the local distributors for the tool - both for software and consulting
what does it do
what are its particular strengths
what situations is it particularly suited to
if an organisation decides to purchase a copy, is it likely to be future-proof: will the tool still be around in two years, or can material which is stored using the tool be ported to another tool easily if the tool is discontinued
how much will it cost
what level of expertise is required for its use

The best place to start looking for this information is on the web. Downloading a demo version is also a good idea. I would expect you to talk to at least one person who doesn't sell the tool, but who has extensive experience of its use.

The tools are as follows:

HTML browser/editor (I will do this one)
HDK
SGML (any tool that uses it)
Domino.doc
Front Page
Interleaf
FrameMaker
Pagemaker