When I started as a technical writer, in the pre-PC days, most work was in what was called the engineering field. I mainly worked with aircraft manuals, but also with manuals relating to other engineering areas, such as buses, ships, and buildings. We produced hand-written manuscripts, which were typed, reviewed, typeset, laid out, reviewed, and finally printed.

Read more

The first teleconference meeting of the DITA Help subcommittee was held on Thursday/Friday last week. (That's Thursday in the US and Europe, and Friday in Australia and Asia.) The group has excellent experience across a broad range of fields, but all have in common an enthusiasm to make DITA a viable Help authoring environment. The first meeting broadly discussed goals and scope, but from now on we have to become more focussed on the actions we need to take!