FLOSS Manuals: The OTHER FM for PDFs

Some writers truly hate Adobe Acrobat and any tool that can do the job better is worth a shot, particularly if it’s open source and easily navigated. Flossmanuals.net introduces FLOSS which does a lot of the single desktop Acrobat Pro’s job – collaboratively and open source.

Could FLOSS be the new Acrobat Pro killer?

FLOSS could bridge the gaps between Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring of content and true documentation. For the specific purpose of supporting open source collaborative efforts this is heaven sent. Most open-source dev teams are simply not able to have those wonderful team meetings for doc review either for financial or time management purposes.

Update: Anne Gentle’s site talks about an event called a Booksprint that FlossManuals.net is doing for technical writers in support of open source programs.

I’ve been reading Janet Swisher’s review of FLOSS Manuals. She examines the pros and cons of Wiki briefly and explains the problem / solution of FLOSS definitively:

You can write documentation using an open source word processor like OpenOffice.org Writer, but you still need a content management system of some kind to handle versioning of drafts and communication within a project community, and CMSs are complex to set up and maintain.

And so a divide has emerged, with open source programmers on one side, wishing somebody would come help write the docs, and potential writers on the other side, too intimidated or too busy to learn the tools to work on open source projects.

FLOSS Manuals bridges that divide, and does so in a way that is deeply rooted in the open source ethos of community and collaboration.

FLOSS and Wikis for Documentation

The implementation and administration of the wiki model always seems to be the insurmountable challenge, if one is to be found. Janet has a solid point regarding Stewart Mader’s viewpoint on wikis for documentation:

I’ve generally been skeptical of wiki advocates who say, “Oh yeah, and you can create documentation in a wiki, too”, because I’ve seen very few actual examples.

Janet’s link refers to an article by Stewart Mader regarding the specific issue of documentation within a wiki. This happens to be an area where Stewart Mader and I disagreed earlier this year. I haven’t heard of many live wikis truly impacting technical writing and Janet confirms this from her perspective as well.

I’m happy to report that Stewart, Janet, and I technically all win on this point.

FLOSS Manuals IS a wiki, but it’s purpose-built for creating documentation. Its founders have created an open-source standard of documentation that blends reading, writing, plus allowing output and redistribution of content, all efficiently administrated for the open-source community.

However, each manual must be managed separately and that’s where technical writing and document content management skills shine.

Flossmanuals: A Help Authoring Tool Killer?

This bears examining because there’s a lot to be said about context-sensitive help within applications as well as the authoring platform for help. Tom Johnson’s recent poll and the ensuing HATT debate shows a passionate user base for tools.

Janet states:

Flossmanuals.net is heavily oriented towards book-style manuals; you could use it for topic-oriented online help, but it might be a stretch—a HAT it is not. But now that there is FLOSS Manuals, there simply is no longer a technological reason for any open source project not to have documentation.

I agree with this. There’s a method to the madness when you’re writing online help files and formatting is a critical element which a formal HAT tool is designed for.

For now, FLOSS is free*, with a minor amount of techie magic necessary. I envision beginning tech writers using this to support their early projects for open source software and quickly learning the basics of the technical communication trade.

*From the Flossmanuals site:

Our principle aim is not to be a publisher but to create as many tools and outlets for quality free documentation as possible. If that means you wish to use the FM tool set but host or ‘publish’ under your own banner, then that’s excellent. We are very happy to offer you a documentation platform to meet all your documentation needs.

Of course, all this is for free software / open source software projects only. If you create proprietary software then…

Clearly this means that you need to talk to them before boldly profiting from this community.

Workflow Focused Help Authoring Tools

Figuring out the fastest and best workflow is something the MadCap and Adobe teams are each wrangling, however they have markedly different approaches.

MadCap’s Team Server solution is in development. Along with the expected release of the publication centered form of Flare, Blaze, this is their collaborative workflow answer.  

Adobe seems to be several generations behind MadCap. Adobe’s answer to innovation seems to be to continue bundling new product lines into their Technical Communications Suite, plus to integrate what MadCap introduces as quickly as possible. If they can’t directly compete with innovation, bundling secondary products is another way to add value.

I can see that both are working towards collaboration tools – MadCap with X-Edit, Adobe with Acrobat and their newly acquired web-based collaborative tool, Buzzword.

My Opinion:

FLOSSManuals.net is a great place to start writing content for developers if you’re just starting out or would like to support a friend’s really cool application. I know of several for-profit companies that put out free widgets of one sort or another that don’t have tech writing staff. This would be perfect for that as well.

The other side of the coin is that it gives a good measure of what’s actually effective. While wiki implementation is challenging, on a cost scale when someone like FLOSSManuals is administrating it, it’s definitely worth exploring.

While not a HAT replacement, this model may work well to supplement a workflow.

It’s been a while. Kicking off today with the impact of Web 2.0 on investigative reporting.

Web 2.0 Online Collaborative Takedown: Beijing’s Gymnasts

It seems that the Chinese Olympic gymnast age issue has some new online forensic evidence that points irrefutably to the Streisand effect taking place to rewrite history within the Chinese Gymnastics statistics.

Mike Walker broke the story about He Kexin while operating under the pseudonym Stryde Hax and had this to say:

This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet.

Will this stand?

Apparently not when half the literate world researches and screen prints the cached stats…

News agencies AP and FoxNews were quick to verify the source and interview Mike Walker.

Scriptorium Launches Content-Rich Wiki

Sarah O’Keefe from Scriptorium / Palimpsest did several interesting and enlightened things. First, she gave away about thirty copies of her very cool book which I have recommended for some time. Then she commenced to launch their wiki, with a tremendous amount of content available for research, comments, and modification.

Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring).

We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.

Articulate: Working On Releases | Revising Content

As I find the time this busy week I’ve been testing out the Articulate Online software. It appears to be a good SaaS for LMS tracking without the overhead cost, similar to the model MadCap Software has taken with their Feedback Service.

I’ll write a review later after my evaluation. As it stands, Articulate Online’s a KISS type of tool and very intuitive. I like the graphics and intuitive UX / workflow.

Cross-functional Dynamic Duo: Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers

One of Articulate’s contributors Tom Kuhlmann asks the question Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid?

For me, this article touches on the key requirement for revising old content to make it more relevant with the changes in reading habits we have. This is something that all of us Technical Communicators really needs to do but just can’t seem to find the time, or the budget approval in time.

This just in… Authoring Tools Still Draw Blood

In fact, just this week Bill Swallow and Tom Johnson had a key debate regarding tool usage, focusing on time savings from tools versus time spent on content. From Tom’s post:

The latest poll, “Which Authoring Tool Is Best for You?” has received nearly 600 votes from people around the world, and was discussed at length on the HATT listserv. In all this discussion, I’ve realized one thing: technical writers are passionate about the tools they use.

Bill answers within the comments and on the HATT list.

… And Back To The Rapid eLearning Dynamic Duo

My opinion is that Tom Kuhlmann has touched on one of the key reasons content needs to have a shelf life; if users are no longer understanding the dry, PDF print-based format, it’s going to cost the corporation or blended learning teams more time and money.

Therefore it seems that both the Technical Writing departments and the Online Training departments would benefit from more cross-functional workflow. A well-supported wiki or an online tool like MadCap’s Feedback Service would allow feedback at any time for changes that Instructional Designers might like to see. Of course this would be best behind the firewall and content notes safely tucked away for reasonable update cycles.

I avoid saying add team meetings for a reason; I hate them and they suck up everyone’s time. If you are having a cross-functional Dynamic Duo meeting, chief among the first topics should be updating the styles for a better flow.

Going at it the other way, I’m sure the online help files would benefit from having updated tutorials and case studies hyperlinked into them. Additionally, blog content might benefit from dissection of a case study for team-based discussion, distance learning, etc.

Articulate’s Rapid eLearning Tom Kuhlmann states:

The main point is that just because you do a course online, doesn’t mean you can’t blend the course content with offline activities.

MadCap’s Mimic 2.0 – Silverlight

MadCap released Mimic 2.0 a few months ago. Among other modifications Mimic 2.0 now allows both Flash and Silverlight output. I’ve covered Silverlight previously in this blog as an emerging technology. Even with few external feature updates I think introducing Silverlight is a strong first step for MadCap into the eLearning / LMS space. However I’m still waiting for the Mimic Product Manager’s blog…

DITA

Check out Anne Gentle’s Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) reading list. Great information about structured writing and questions about implementation of DITA.

And Finally… I’d Rather Be Writing – Or Maybe Not!

Tom Johnson heads for the hills for a bit of peace and quiet amidst the musing on the Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

The more you blog, the more people you attract through Google. The more search-engine-optimized your posts are, the more people find you. The more tweets you send, the more people follow you. The more social networks you join, the more people add themselves to your page. The better posts you write, the more people subscribe to your RSS feed.

The more content you generate – in whatever form and media – the more trackbacks and links people generate about you. The more you produce, the more emails and questions you get. You become like a content cloud – attracting Google searches.

Once again Tom’s analysis nails the issue precisely.

His post about his coworker mirrors my feelings regarding Twitter and why I’ve stayed away from Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, and YouTube. I’m a reluctant technophobe when it comes to my own transparency online.

But the up side is so rewarding. Again, from Tom’s post Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

Having a public space to write and publish my thoughts — where people actually read what I write and respond with comments or email or trackbacks — it’s motivating. My words no longer live solely in Word documents on an old hard drive, intended to be published in an obscure literary journal after months of slush pile dormancy.

My writing freely propagates around the Internet.

It freely connects with others.

Finding balance is one of those struggles that we all have in life. As you can tell from my blog, my postings are sporadic. That’s only one of the struggles I have.