Archive for the ‘Authoring’ Category

Tools: Paste Clipboard Text with Tags in Epic Editor

When you’re working in the Epic Editor, you may not be able to paste clipboard text that contains tags, such as: This is a sample text that contains tags <passwd>such as this</passwd>. You’ll see a warning note at the left bottom of the editor, like this:

Take care of your comfort, productivity and well-being

While we toil away in front of the computers day in and day out, we take for granted and ignore the most valuable resource we possess – our safety and well being. Take a moment to review the ergonomic guide at http://www.hp.com/ergo/. What we do today has an impact in the years to come, and [...]

Blogging from MS Word 2007

Did you know you could blog from Microsoft Office Word 2007? This blog post was published by clicking Office Button > Publish > Blog. If it is the first time, your blog has to be registered. I could insert a category; however, I couldn’t find a way to insert a tag (had to add them [...]

Automated Technical Writing?

Some time back, there was an interesting discussion about the future of Technical Writing (TW). Someone said, the way the standards and guides are being framed, there would be a day when TW would have templates and almost no scope for errors. Does it mean TW is moving towards automation?  Can TW be automated at [...]

Error in Perforce: Can't clobber writable files

I use Perforce for version control of the documentation files. I noticed some files were revised and checked-in by other users. When I tried to get the latest version of the files by Sync to Head Revision, Perforce gave the following error: Can’t clobber writable file… I found it was because some of the files [...]

2009 User Assistance Tools Survey

From http://www.writersua.com/surveys/tools09/index.html: “Which tools do most of us find useful? Which tools provide us with the most satisfaction? This portion of the survey supplies you with a peer review to assist you in planning your tool acquisitions…" "Note: Past surveys had consistently shown that well over 90% of respondents use Microsoft Word. We left Word [...]

Too Many Inputs Freak Out the Technical Writer

[This article has been published in INDUS, March 2009 edition at http://indus.stc-india.org/. To view the article, browse to the bottom of the page for a list of articles or go to Out of the Box > Too Many Inputs Freak Out the Technical Writer. You can also download the PDF copy.] How to track and address inputs [...]

Daily Encounters of All Kinds

[This article has been published in MITWA News, January 2009 edition. It is available for the members of MITWA Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MITWA. Download the PDF copy.] How Technical Communicators can deal with frustrating moments at work. One of the topics at STC India’s 10th Annual Conference in Pune dealt with the emotional train of [...]