Makarand Pandit and Rajeev Jain's Technical Writing Session for Bangalore Meetup

The Bangalore Technical Writers Meetup-Supported by STC India was held at Continuos Computing, on Saturday 29th September, 2007.

The name of the attendees' and their respective companies are listed below:

1.Rajeev Jain – Zilog
2.Makarand Pandit- Technowrites
3.Ganesh Shenoy- Huawei
4.Anindita Basu- Integra Micro Systems
5.Sairam Y- LSI
6.Blessy Thomas- Citec
7.Joy Myalil- TCS
8.L Chelladurai- ABB
9.Binamra Sharma- Student
10.Rishi Malik- ACS
11.Manoj Kumar-ACS
12.Vinay Kumar- Consultant
13.Sudha A- Technowrites
14.Swetha- Truimph India
15.Gautam Goswami-ACS
16.Sreeraj- Wipro
17.Sreejith G.S- Collabis India
18.AV Jayanthil- Rebaca
19.R.Saravanan-
20.Sagar Kirloskar- Technowrites
21.Jyotsna- Zilog
22.Hemanth- TCS
23.Harihara Subramaniam- Novell
24.Swarna- PGSL
25.Naveen Cruz-Continuos Computing
26.Rajdeep Gupta- Infosys

Highlights:

The session on C++ began at 10:40 am. Rajdeep triggered the meeting by welcoming the attendees and the speakers-Rajeev Jain and Makarand Pandit. There were two sessions lined up for the day- "Programming Concepts for Writers on C++" by Rajeev Jain, Zilog and "Introduction to Structured Writing & Structured FrameMaker" by Makarand Pandit, Technowrites



Rajeev started the session by asking the attendees, what made them to attend the programming session.Rajeev started his presentation by stating "Concepts are important, not language." He then explained the basics of C++ that is, differences between a parameter and a variable, data types, input values; return values, error codes, and host of other things. He then differentiated between keywords and pre-defined identifiers. Rajeev mainly concentrated on the API/ SDK documentation.

He also provided an API template, which is the first step towards API Reference Guide documentation. He answered all the queries related to API documentation.

The training material is available at the following link:

http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/files

A break of 15 minutes was taken after which the session on "Structured Writing & Structured FrameMaker" begun. Makarand Pandit or Mak, as he is fondly called entertained the audience right from the word, GO. He quizzed the audience by questioning on authoring and documents. The answers provided the audience were up to the level. He then explained in detail the terms and cleared all their doubts.

Mak then went ahead with his illustration on Adobe FrameMaker 8.0. He explained in detail what he had learnt in 12 hours to the audience in just about one and half hours. Mak explained what Element Definition Document (EDD) and Document Type Definition (DTD) are all about. He also showed how to edit an EDD, importing a DTD, and all the other tricks that will come handy to the naïve user of FrameMaker 8.0.

Then came the Q & A time in which Mak was asked questions on all the recent developments in Information Development field. One such question was on DITA.

He then explained in brief, what DITA is all about and how it has evolved over the years.

Rajdeep concluded the session by offering a vote of thanks to Mr. Rajeev Jain and Mr. Makarand Pandit for their wonderful presentations and to Continuous Computing for sponsoring the meetup.

You can view the photos of the meetup by clicking the following URL:

http://techwriter.meetup.com/2/photos/?photoAlbumId=225090

From Word to FrameMaker with Love- Written by Mumpy

Folks

This is a piece written by Mumpy, one of Israel's most humorous technical writers. Interestingly, he makes a point on the the impact of his documentation work while migrating from Word to FrameMaker. Fantastic stuff! All credits to the writer Mumpy.

From Word to FrameMaker with Love

I decided to join the 21st century a few months ago and bought myself a brand new sparkling license for FrameMaker, complete with a Multiple Undo feature for writers like me who always realize they have made a terrible mistake just a nanosecond too late.

It was glorious waving goodbye to Word. No longer will I have to wonder why my documents go straight from page 1 to page 3. No longer will Tahoma font continue to defy me and creep into my documents unbidden. Yes, indeed, we bid a fond adieu to Word and strode confidently into the wonderful world of FrameMaker without looking back. (I did have a third technical writer who looked back and I”ve been sweeping her up all week and putting her on my salad)

But it wasn’t all fun and nice cups of tea. My trusty side-kick found it very hard to say goodbye to the little magic paintbrush icon that that you waved three times and then you could trick Word into doing what you wanted. And I simply cannot figure out how to apply shading to a middle row in a table. But by and large we are getting to grips with the table designers and the paragraph designers and the character designers and the fashion designers.

There is also all the new lingo to learn. Suddenly, we have strange and mysterious concepts like straddling and shrink wrapping, not to mention anchored frames and variables and master pages and side heads.

You know, you spend your life happily merging cells and then one day, poof, all of a sudden you have to straddle. Luckily for me, I did two years of Pilates and am quite good at straddling. Every time I get some disconcordant cells in a table and I need to straddle then, I simply lay down some towels on the floor and Bob’s your uncle

I’m even getting to grips with a Wingding Variable in a fetching shade of turquoise. And did I mention how much I like Master Pages? I’m not so keen on the Reference Pages though and I’m not quite sure what the reason is for their existence. Only God and Shlomo Perets know, and I’m not so sure about God.

The biggest problem is the time it takes to migrate from Word to FM – especially when transferring graphics. My boss is convinced that either I don’t know what I’m doing or that FrameMaker was a waste of money. I suspect that the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. And now, if you will excuse me, I have about 59 unresolved cross-references to take care of. They look and act pretty resolved to me – but FM says not. And who am I to argue?