You are Invited

After a marathon long-distance courtship of four and a half years, Chitra and I are tying the knot. Be there to share the moment, wish us luck, and see us off as we take our first step towards a journey of a life time.

"When? Where? Whaat?" -> More information here. So all ye blogger friends: be there.

Write to me: suman 'at' techwritersindia 'dot' com

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Opportunity: Tech writer for developing dictionary of terms

Tore Nestenius is looking for a good tenchical writer who can help write a kind of dictionary for software development terms and computer hardware terms. Where terms/words are explained. Interested? Rush your mail to synchron(at)algonet(dot)se .




Write to me: Suman[at]techwritersindia[dot]com

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WebWorks Publisher 2003 - An introduction

WebWorks® Publisher is not a Help authoring tool in the traditional sense. It is, rather, a tool for converting documents created in Microsoft® Word (2000 or XP) or Adobe® FrameMaker® (5.5.6 or later) to any of 11 different online output formats, including 5 different flavors of online Help.

More on WritersUA (formerly WinWriters)


write to me: Suman[at]sumankumar[dot]com

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Microsoft Longhorn Help: Highlights

"Authors will develop content for "Longhorn" Help using an XML-based markup language called Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML, pronounced "mammal"). Unlike HTML, this markup language is presentation-independent: topics and the elements they contain are defined semantically. For example, in HTML it's common practice to format menu options and other user interface elements with a bold tag. In MAML, you would instead apply the <ui> element to identify the purpose of the text. MAML consists of a number of distinct content types, each of which defines its own set of valid constituent elements. Examples of content types include conceptual, FAQ, glossary, procedural, troubleshooting, and tutorial." Read more: WritersUA - Microsoft "Longhorn" Help Highlights


write to me: Suman[at]sumankumar[dot]com

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Technical Writing Glossary

I think this is a neat idea and is an excellent resource for aspirants and practising pros alike. Check it out.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~mbuckler/glossary1.shtml
write to me: Suman[at]sumankumar[dot]com

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Participative Help Design

Participative Help Design

I used a weblog script to create online help for -uh- using weblogs. I used a plugin to pull help topics as alphabetical links. The script has in-built search. So, there, I had an index and a search. And I left the 'Comments' feature alone. And guess what, I had users commenting on individual topics, which resulted in fine tuning the help and making it user-centered.

So, I conclude that user-feedback even after the documentation is released is invaluable and is much more relevant; users give feedback based on how they use the Help system. I'd say it is a nice way to fill gaps that you may have overseen during your project. I am talking from experience!

I used Nucleus: http://nucleuscms.org. People ask me why not MovableType; simple, it is not open-source like Nucleus. So, experiment with blogs and tell me if you can, how it helped you.

write to me: Suman@sumankumar.com

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3rd STC Chennai Meet this sunday.

3rd STC Chennai Knowledge Sharing Session this sunday, April 4th.



This month's knowledge sharing session will be held this coming sunday, april 4th at Cognizant's office at 10:00 a.m. Please do spread the word around.



Day & Date : Sunday, April 4, 2004

Time : 10 to 11 a.m

Venue : Cognizant Technology Services (CTS), 3rd Floor, Conference Room, Whites Road, Royapettah.

Contact Person : Kiruba Shankar . phone : 52133619 (res) , 52150505 (off)

RSVP : kiruba @ kiruba.com

Door Charge : Rs.20 ( Snacks will be served )



We are planning to get a video camera along so we can record the presentations and discussions.

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