Version control

One of my favourite cinematographic scenes is in Men in Black, in the room with all the impressive outer-space technology when K turns to J and says “This is gonna replace CDs soon; guess I’ll have to buy the White Album again...” I love this scene because it points to some forms of expression and art being timeless. I guess I am the kind of person who enjoys certain films, songs, games and books in a way that will stand up to time, I actively enjoy watching Zulu, whether it’s on the TV, VHS or DVD, and will probably enjoy watching it in 30 years time on whatever format we use then. The issue then is, with the exception of the transition from DVD to Blu-Ray (as a Blu-Ray player plays DVDs as well), titles are continually re-purchased. Looking at my dad’s music collection, I can see the same tracks on vinyl, CD, MP3, and I know there was a tape in the late ’80s that perished after far too many summer days in the car.

I accept that progress happens, I also accept that an iPod stores far more music by volume than a tape, and that it’s unlikely to melt in the car. I also get that any machine that accepted all possible media formats is more likely to resemble a creation of Dr. Emmett Brown than something you'd like to install in your living room. However, when I look at my professional life, I find this need for multiple versions incredibly frustrating.

On my desktop right now 3 separate versions of Adobe FrameMaker are installed (7.2 running on a virtual XP machine, 9 and 11). I have access to every version of MS Word (and Office) since 1997; I still have the discs and licence for all of these “just in case” a client has a specific requirement. There are serious issues with this need to keep slightly different software iterations around “just in case”. The small box of discs that I started out with in the ’90s is now a “software cupboard” where licensed software is stored just in case it could one day save the world (almost like a software “man drawer” ). This need for a cupboard, and the virtual machine, is partly generated by software companies not building in true backward compatibility – yes, I can open an old file in a new version of the software, but once I save it, it can never be opened again by a client who’s not invested in the same version of the software. The current solution is the cupboard, but I am becoming increasingly enthralled by the various “cloud” approaches out there (Adobe and Microsoft both have offerings in this category).

The theory with the cloud is that I get access to whatever the latest version is (including patches/service/support) for a monthly fee rather than a single, and sometimes intimidating, one off cost. I feel that there are many advantages in this approach, and the version number could almost be set aside to instead be replaced with the knowledge that for a a monthly cost, I am always up to date. I feel that subscribing to a rolling “cloud” based programme would do away with the software cupboard in the long term, although I am deeply concerned that the companies putting these offerings together should be aware that occasionally professional technical communicators may need the ability to roll back their installations to handle “legacy clients”.

I’d quite like comments on this post, especially from anyone involved in or experienced with the type of cloud based systems we’re considering subscribing to.

Andrew

Walking the line

Today has been a strange work day. This is in part because I’ve not had a full night’s sleep in nearly a week on account of becoming a dad. I’ve come to realise that meeting your children either early or late can lead to sleepless nights; whilst waiting till destiny forced me into a deadly light-sabre battle might have been waiting too long, being there at the time of delivery is also quite “epic” in the demands that are placed on a father. In a more ideal world, I think I’d like to meet the child over a cup of something warm (tea, or in his case milk) at a time when no-one is screaming or thinking about using anything sharp on anyone else. That’s not the whole story though, in between the frantic mad dashes to hospital, the sleepless nights, the assembly of nursery furniture – on the subject of technical authoring, the instructions for assembly were very good... and they’ve finally fired the guy at the furniture factory who used to put one extra bolt in the packet just to trigger any latent OCD – not to mention deadlines for various clients there’s been today, which is best described as a “lull”.

This doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing. I’ve got Clearly Stated set up with a Facebook presence, and have started teaching myself XML. This means that I’m working on marketing and capacity building. It somehow doesn’t feel enough; maybe that’s because I like measuring my output and it’s far easier to point at a document I’ve written and say, “See, I’ve been working, I wrote that” than it is to say “I learnt stuff” and expect it to be counted. This is a fairly recent development: I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m working in the family business and don’t want to let people down, or because I’m about to be paying a mortgage, but a few years ago the idea of spending an employer’s time reading a book (fiction) and on Facebook (commenting sarcastically on assorted photographs from around the world) seemed like the perfect way to spend my time. Now, even when stuff is most definitely “vocational” and “relevant”, I feel some measure of guilty angst that maybe I’m not getting quite enough done. Hopefully, I don’t become complacent. I feel that part of being professional, and responsible, is having the ability to self-monitor and make sure that the activities we are involved in are in some way relevant to our profession and the job we are asked to do as authors. After all, it is far easier to quickly minimise an inappropriate browser window or leisure-app than it ever was to palm a Steven King novel under a textbook and remain undetected. I think the man in black (the one with the guitar not the light-sabre) would describe this behaviour as “Walking the line”.

Andrew

The education of readers and writers

I remember clearly many of my secondary school English lessons. Perhaps one of the most interesting lessons was on the subject of how stories begin. Several options were presented ranging from the somewhat clichéd “It was a dark and stormy night” through to the more nuanced but equally as suggestive “to Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman”. The central thrust of the lesson, after going through various successful opening lines – or at least the opening lines to successful works of fiction – seemed to be that there wasn’t really a right or a wrong way to begin a story, so long as the author managed to in some way reach into the mind of the audience and plant a question or two or three that would make them want to read more. This reader would continue turning the pages like some literate, speed reading dervish until such a time as those questions were answered, the book was complete and the reader left shocked, amused and fulfilled. Being older and cynical, I also imagine that these answers would need to be rooted far enough into the book that they couldn’t be quickly answered by someone having a surreptitious shufty in a book shop, thereby forcing a sale and the generation of royalties.

In school, and maybe this was just the 1990s, there was always this sense that people wrote either stories or essays, with the occasional recourse to poetry (particularly the intricacies of iambic pentameter) and plays (presumably for either those who could only write dialogue, or for those who found quotation marks offensive). This probably explains the conversations I’ve had recently where I’m initially asked what kind of story I’m writing. I tried getting ahead of the curve with one old friend by starting out with “technical author” rather than “writer”, and received the reply “well, you were always interested in science fiction; does it happen in space?”

My inner cynic tells me not to complain too much, as this lack of understanding reflects a fairly broad niche that technical authors are required to fill. When looking at the bigger picture I feel that, just as there has been a recent push to replace the older IT syllabi with something that will better gear the UK for a technological future, there could be a matching push to move the art and craft of understanding, manipulating and using words to better reflect the way modern professional writers often write.

Andrew

Colourless green ideas

One of the reasons I enjoy writing and training is because I enjoy words. The way vocabulary can either flutter past or dive-bomb the awareness of an audience is a constant source of both amusement and stimulation. Today we are going to use colour based metaphors to explore the way writing sometimes works. The vocabulary of a writer is the palette from which he creates; just as one would probably not paint an office in byzantine paint, or a disco in battleship grey, the way in which we use vocabulary when writing correlates strongly with the context of the writing.

Many readers at this point, especially my friends who write “creatively” will be thinking that they are doing the byzantine, or even polka-dot neon writing whilst “technical authors” are limited to battleship grey, with possibly a little magnolia thrown in for good measure. I’m afraid to say that you’re only partially right; technical authors are not into psychedelic writing, but nor does monochrome really work. Whilst the creative writer can allow for departures from reality and the occasional moment of deus ex machina, for the technical author, reality is our linchpin and the devil really is in the details. A creative writer may forget to have a character reload once within a half hour long fire-fight especially if the weapon system is sufficiently futuristic, whereas the technical writer will need to explain exactly how reloading happens, or how the fanciful futuristic firearm functions (try saying that fast!) in a way that’s both accessible to end users and the purchasing authority responsible for materiel* supplies.

If we then return to our metaphor of colour we find that technical authoring has “word schemes” the way a wedding will have a “colour scheme”, and that we will write within the confines of those word schemes to exact and powerful effect. At least within the work I’ve been doing recently the majority colour scheme seems to be Dagobah Green with hints of authority. When documenting software there is a real sense of having users “do or do not do.” The idea of trying, or of having users attempt something that I haven’t already fully explored is just not an option in this case.

Andrew

*Note for the eagle eyed: As a rifle is a military supply, this is not a spelling mistake!