Open Source For Technical Writing Teams

1 Lars Trieloff Open Source for Tech Writing Teams Supporting Technical Documentation with Open Source Tools

About the Speaker 2 Open Source Developer (Apache Cocoon, Goshaky) Lars Trieloff Book Author (DocBook-XML, published 2005) Startup Founder (Mindquarry, 2006) Blogger (http://weblogs.goshaky.com/weblogs/lars/) Interests: Web 2.0, Collaboration, Documentation

Introduction 3 High tech vendors need technical Lars Trieloff documentation Open Source projects need technical documentation even more Mediator between the product and the user technical documentation needs: people process tools This talk is all about process&tools

Processes: Who needs 4 them? help us coordinate teamwork Lars Trieloff help us coordinate people help us coordinate tasks help us coordinate knowledge Conclusion: We need processes

How information 5 workers work Lars Trieloff

Who collaborates in technical documentation 6 Lars Trieloff

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff learn about the user

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff learn about the product

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff evaluate current docs

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff synthesize information

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff write the information plan

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff create the content speciﬁcation

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff create the ﬁrst draft

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff review the ﬁrst draft

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff write the second draft

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff copy-editing

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff localization & translation

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff publish to print and web

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff publish to online help

Activities in the Process 7 Lars Trieloff

Management Activities 8 Development of a project plan Lars Trieloff Development of estimates for all activities Tracking of hours expended for all activities cost-control, better estimates, better managebility Manage translators Manage production checklist

9 The Toolchain Lars Trieloff We want a 100% free software toolchain to support roles and activities in the documentation process

The Basics: Documentation Format 10 DocBook Lars Trieloff established open source documentation format lots of tools Alternatives: DITA, Tex Image Publishing: PNG (raster graphics) and SVG (vector graphics)

Next: Tools for 11 Documentation Inkscape Lars Trieloff GIMP XML Editors? Emacs jEdit Lyx VIM Pollo Xerlin Quanta VEX

Advanced: Team 12 Infrastructure Technical Documentation can learn Lars Trieloff from Software Development. Different Work Same Problems Similar Solutions Possible Three signs of successful software projects: Version Control Systems Bug Tracking Systems Wikis

Version Control 13 A safeguard for your work Lars Trieloff nothing gets lost undo/redo for your team Activity tracking logs differential comparison Concurrent work merging we are using XML, it‘s possible Version Control Systems Subversion Bazaar, Mercurial, Codeville Mindquarry (easy to use GUI)

Bug Tracking 14 In software development: Lars Trieloff Bug Tracking Issue Tracking In technical documentation: task tracking Beneﬁts everyone knows what to do managers can track allows bottom-up-management State of the Art: Bugzilla (Powerful, but complex) Mindquarry is a lightweight task tracker for teams

Wikis 15 Where to use Lars Trieloff collaborative whiteboard collaborative outliner collaborative mindmap collaborative website gather information in wikis Do not use Wikis for producing contents - It‘s authoring capabilities are weak compared to your desktop tools Software MediaWiki, MoinMoin, Mindquarry

Conclusion 16 Technical Documentation is difﬁcult Lars Trieloff Processes can help making your life easier Processes are often hard to implement Software for team infrastructure can help Software is hard to use, too, but Mindquarry is an Open Source Collaboration Software with usability in mind

http://www.docster.info	150
http://www.mindquarry.com	95
http://www.slideshare.net	42
http://elhabib.fakir.free.fr	36
http://blog.techtotalportal.com	31
http://www.bonweb.fr	23
http://redacteur.technique.free.fr	20
http://gtconsultants.org	4
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	2
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Open Source For Technical Writing Teams

by Lars Trieloff on Jun 15, 2007

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Open Source For Technical Writing Teams — Presentation Transcript