Tip of the month from PRC
January 1999

Current trends in technical communication

More info on Adobe K2 + vector drawing programmes: 20 Jan. '99
MS HTML Help Workshop 1.2 info incl. download added: 17 Jan '99
Minor amendments: 5, 6 and 17 Jan. '99
Published: 4 January 1999

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Tip of the month is edited by Peter Ring, PRC (Peter Ring Consultants, Denmark)
- consultants on how to write user friendly manuals

If you have corrections, better texts or suggestions for improvements, please let me know .

Preferred software for technical writers
HTML help is on its way
Machine translation
Possibilities with colour laser printers and photocopiers
Print on demand = "In-line" manual production
Increased interest in interactive multimedia manuals
Increasing printshop accept of electronic file transfer

Preferred software for technical writers

Over the last year, the winners of the software race have become clearer. Two software houses have taken distance from the other ones: Microsoft in the office sector, and Adobe in the professional graphics world. Their strongholds are Microsoft's almost monopoly on the operating system for PCs (DOS, Windows), and Adobe's control over the de facto standard for the professional printers, PostScript, which is also the basis for Adobe Acrobat.

This trend means conversion of manuals incl. macros from e.g. WordPerfect to MS Word or PageMaker, and PRC has in 1998 been involved in such projects.

The winners within technical writing depends on the application:

Simple editing, short documents: MS Word 97. With the service release 1 (SR1) package MS Word 97 has finally been accepted. Version 2000 is now in beta. Lotus AmiPro seems to have disappeared completely, and Corel seems to fight in vain for their WordPerfect 8.

Advantages (compared to FrameMaker and PageMaker):

Very easy, uncomplicated "normal" editing facilities.
Relatively low price, especially when included in the MS Office packages.
Everybody else has got it, so proofing is easy.
Placing graphics is easy, but a bit clumsy compared to previous versions (why is "Place over text" a fixed option?)

Disadvantages (compared to FrameMaker and PageMaker):

Problems with long documents. The limit depends on the RAM available, and linked non-embedded graphics helps. The "Master Document" function is still deeply unreliable and should be avoided.
Automatic page shifts are not stable because they are printer and "normal.dot" dependent.
No colour separation facilities.
Available for Windows and Mac, only.

Long (50..100+ page) text oriented documents: Adobe FrameMaker , currently in version 5.5.3.

Advantages (compared to Word and PageMaker):

Very stable.
No problems with long documents.
Handles colour separations for colour printing.
Available for Windows, UNIX and Mac.

Disadvantages (compared to Word and PageMaker):

High price.
A reputation for being a little difficult to learn and less user friendly than MS Word.
Compatibility problems to/from MS Word.
Proof-readers must have it, too, if electronic proofing is used, and that's costly for e.g. technical control of the document.

Graphics intensive documents: Adobe PageMaker, currently in version 6.52, which seems to be fairly stable. The new version currently named K2 is expected some time 1999 or 2000 and will maybe end up as an integrated version of PageMaker and FrameMaker, and that can be VERY interesting for technical writing. (20 Jan. '99: According to the Jan. '99 issue of Micro Publishing News, K2 will officially be called "InDesign". The article also states that Adobe will unveil the program at Seybold Boston in March.) Corel Ventura has still got very faithful friends, but seems dying. Quark Xpress for Mac/PC is still the king among the top professionals, but seems to be loosing ground because its high price and because it's too complicated compared to the needs of most users. (Quark's attempt to make a hostile take-over of Adobe shows how desperate they are.). Corel Draw never became the competitor it was aimed to be.

Advantages (compared to Word and FrameMaker):

Easy to learn "true" professional DTP programme.
Advanced functions available, e.g. by writing scripts.
Handles colour separations for colour printing.
Easy creation of Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files..

Disadvantages (compared to Word and FrameMaker):

Text editing is a bit clumsy.
Separated modes without auto-switching between graphics and text.
Bad import/export facilities in general.
Available for Windows and Mac, only.

Document transfer: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) seems to have become the de facto standard format for the transfer of documents for printing & distribution for proofing, especially where the receiver doesn't have the original application programme (e.g. PageMaker or FrameMaker). The MS Office formats (.doc, .xls, etc.) seems to be the most commonly format used for the exchange of business documents. Rich Type Format (.rtf) is useable, too, in many cases, but (undeserved?!) less frequently used.
Vector drawing programmes: There is no clear winner yet, but Adobe Illustrator and Visio seem to have won over Corel Draw, especially for technical oriented drawings. Freehand is becoming more frequenly mentioned, but I don't know very much about it. AutoCAD is still dominating in the engineering drawing world.
Raster (bitmap) drawing/handling programmes: In the simple end, Paint Shop Pro seems to have won the race. In the high end, Adobe PhotoShop is still the preferred tool, but it doesn't have the monopoly it previously had.
Screengrabbers: Paint Shop Pro, SnagIt32, Photoshop, Full Shot, Hijaack, Hypersnap, Snapshot, Capture Pro, etc. are fighting for the throne. Currently Paint Shop Pro seems to be the most used one. Personally I find SnagIt32 more user friendly for making series of screenshots.
Computer systems: PCs with Windows seems to have captured some 85 to 90 % of the techwriting market. Mac and UNIX systems are sharing the rest, and the iMac seems to have give the Mac a new life. OS/2 is almost dead. LINUX (free Windows competitor) seems to be gaining ground rapidly, and it's now supported by companies like IBM, Oracle and Corel.
Monitors and screen resolution: Surprisingly many technical writers are still working with 640x480 or 800x600 pixels resolution on a 14" or 15" monitor. 17" monitors are so reasonable in price now (~500 US$), and so much better. A 17" monitor running 1024x768 should be the absolute minimum. If price is not important, a 20" or 21" monitor is the absolute preference.

HTML help is on its way

HTML help has been announced to be the future. But there are still only very few examples available, e.g. http://www.bofa.com (Bank of America), http://www.delta-air.com (Delta Airlines), the new Mac OS 8.5, and Microsoft's Visual Studio package (Visual Basic Pro, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro, Visual InterDev, Visual J++, all version 6.0). The Help function of Visual Studio is based on MS Internet Explorer 4.01+ as viewer. Because Microsoft wants MS Internet Explorer to become the future standard browser, we will probably see HTML help based on MS Internet Explorer in all major Microsoft products, and this will be the determining factor for the future of HTML help.

There is still no real standard for HTML based help systems. Microsoft's HTMLhelp and the free(!) MS HTML Help Workshop 1.2 downloadable (4 MB) from Microsoft's website ( http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/htmlhelp/download.asp ) is a good guess for a possible future standard, although not very ideal, yet. MS HTML help system is based on a special reader, hh.exe (27 kB), which displays the help function in two windows, one for navigation and one for the info. All help html-files, image files, the index file, etc. is compiled into one .chm helpfile.

For more info about HTML help in general, see Tip of the Month November 1998 .

Machine translation

Machine translation will not be the final solution to all translation problems in the forthcoming years, but the systems are still becoming better and better. The status today is, that the better systems are very useful for making a raw translation before the human translator takes over and makes an - also linguistically - correct translation. An example of multi-language machine translation can be seen on the AltaVista Internet search engine.

Possibilities with colour laser printers and photocopiers

Colour laser printers and colour photocopiers are now (January '99) available down to the US$ 2000..3000 range. This means, that also all of you who are making low volume print of manuals using laser printers or photocopiers should now consider seriously adding colours to your manuals. Examples of suitable use of colours:

Full colour company logo.
Use coloured warning icons and/or warning texts (front/background colour).
Colour the headings or heading underscores e.g. blue or red.
Colour the arrows on b/w drawings to make them easier to see.
Colour the part of a drawing you specifically want to draw the attention to.

Print on demand = "In-line" manual production

Print on demand is now an economically acceptable solution.

Experiments by Danfoss in 1997-98 have shown that

their system, developed in co-operation with Rank Xerox worked well.
print on demand in some cases is only marginally more expensive (10 to 15%) than the ordinary "printed manuals on stock".
user dedicated manuals meant less calls to their hot-line.

The advantages of "print on demand" are ...

Language problem solved. The customer can get the manual in the desired language(s) without getting maybe five other disturbing languages in the same manual.
No stock of manuals (which may become obsolete.)
May be tailored to the individual user's application (if known).
High flexibility.
You can make dedicated customer-tailored manuals to the customers' specific application or user level.

The disadvantages are ...

Slightly higher price (see above)
Less conceptual freedom
Not yet offset printing quality - but good enough for the purpose.

Increased interest in interactive multimedia manuals

The low prices on and widespread accept of CD-ROMs means that more and more manuals are distributed as CD-ROM.

The advantages are:

A CD-ROM is cheaper than a book/booklet.
Many languages on one CD-ROM ...

don't disturb the user
significantly decrease the number of versions needed
give the user the freedom to select language according to personal preferences. E.g. in Denmark, many people prefer to read the original English text instead of the translated Danish text, because translation always means a potential risk for errors or inaccuracies.

Possibilities for interactive tutorials. PRC has been involved in such a project in 1998 including ...

on-screen text and speech controlled handling of a PC dummy of the product for demo and tutoring purposes.
language controlled texts and speech.
introduction video facility.

The user can go as much or as little into details as (s)he wants.
Possibilities for showing an image of each spare part without loosing the overview of a spare part list.
Possibilities for on-line updating of manuals and software via the Internet.
Possibilities for generating and sending fax/e-mail with orders for spare parts, accessories and consumables.

The disadvantages are:

The user must have access to a PC (or Mac ...)
Many users prefers to read a printed version, mainly because:

they use low resolution screens.
they are easier to browse in (but more difficult to search in.)
they then don't have to switch the computer on to see the manual.

Many users have ink-jet printers only, which are expensive to use (price per page). That means they feel you put your costs on them.

The file formats are expected to be HTML help or Adobe Acrobat, combined with executable (.exe) files for on-line tutorials.

Increasing printshop accept of electronic file transfer

Even the most conservative printshops are now finally getting an e-mail address and accept files send by e-mail. Please note, that most Internet Service Providers has a limit for files attached to an e-mail of typically 2 to 10 MB.
Instead of sending it by e-mail, you can upload the file (e.g. by FTP) to a secret directory on your website, ask the printshop to download it from there, and delete it there when downloaded.
The low prices of CD-ROM writers (~300+ US$) and CD-ROM (CD-R) writeable media (~1+ US$) means ...

easier transfer of large project files and image files.
probably decreased use of IOMega ZIP/JAZ and Syquest drives which are so expensive (US$ ~20 to 120) that they must be returned to the sender.

CD-RW (re-writeable CD-ROMs) has not yet really become popular as transfer media, because ...

special readers are needed, and they are not yet common.
the media are so expensive (US$ ~12+ for a 650 MB media) that they must be returned to the sender.

Over the next few years we will most likely see DVD-ROMs (read-only) and DVD-RAMs (write-once) with 2.6/5.2 GB data capacity (single/double sided) taking over from the CD-ROMs as the general standard. DVD-RAM writers are already available at reasonable prices (~700+ US$), but the write-once media are still quite expensive (~30 US$ single sided/40 US$ double sided). The DVD standards still seems to be a little "under development".

If you disagree with these ideas - or have other relevant points, experiences, or ideas +/-, please e-mail me !

Ideas for new "Tip of the month" subjects are VERY welcome, too!

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Tip of the month from PRC January 1999