Comments on: With All This Fuss About Tools, Three Best Practice Attitudes

By: CBRexhaust

CBRexhaust — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:42:18 +0000

Computer tools are very necessary for productivity.

By: Werewolf

Werewolf — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:55:32 +0000

Спасибо. Добавлено в закладки

By: Acapella

Acapella — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:40:45 +0000

красиво, сделал! Благодарю!!!

By: CharlesJeter.com » Saturday’s Link Roundup

CharlesJeter.com » Saturday’s Link Roundup — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:02:54 +0000

[...] fact, just this week Bill Swallow and Tom Johnson had a key debate regarding tool usage, focusing on time savings from tools versus time spent on [...]

By: Andrey

Andrey — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:24:57 +0000

I need the most the first practice attitudes that called Embrace Tool Learning!

By: Charles

Charles — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:55:47 +0000

Whew – Tom, Bill, it’s been quite the discussion.

Tom – reading the HATT list reminds me of last year when I growsed about RoboHelp not being what it used to be… and reaped the whirlwind.

The survey results that you experienced are solidly in line with trends and statistics that I was following since 2006. Summing up those trends, even though there is a cool bundle called Technical Communication, the most useful tool for help authoring has shifted.

One unanswered question you posed on the list was simply brilliant and I hope this sums up the detail – how much time does everyone really spend doing a project, and can a tool help reduce that time?

According to Mike Hamilton, my source for my podcast last year, MadCap’s focus has been on improving the workflow.

It’s simply a better hammer/saw/ratchet at this point. There are people who are wizards at a lot of other tools, but when you’re trying to shuffle between disparate programs to gather images, media files, and other such things time and productivity can’t help but be impacted.

Charless last blog post..Save Yourself $700 and a Headache | Is MadCap Flare Now Leading Adobe RoboHelp In HAT War?

By: Erika

Erika — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:26:15 +0000

I find myself repeating #2 almost twice a week nowadays. Great post.

…Although, I’m ashamed to admit I did a double take when I saw “Pharisee-Sadducee” there. LOL!

Erikas last blog post..Miami Web Design

By: Craig Prichard

Craig Prichard — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:28:08 +0000

Passionate, fanatical, zealous, etc. reflect strong emotion. Are mechanics equally emotional about their toolbox? Or carpenters about their toolbelt? Probably not so much for tool but maybe they have a favorite or two. Why is there a difference in their “emotional investment”? The mechanic/carpenter/tradesperson has a wide variety of tools to draw from, each with specific and reasonably limited scope of usefulness, and knows what each is used for and what each is not used for; the right tool for the right job. How often would a tradesperson be expected by their superior to do comprehensive, quality work using the wrong tools, just a subset of all the tools best suited for the task, or even just a Swiss Army Knife? Seldom, I suspect. But if stranded on a desert island with only the subset they would adapt and probably begin to grow more “attached” to certain tools because of the success they have had with them. I agree with Bill that tools should not be so important but without them we, like my hypothetical tradespeople, would be unable to accomplish many/most of our tasks.

Technical Communicators (Writers being a subset, IMHO) are frequently called upon to “make a silk purse from sow’s ear”, to accomplish a task with limited or awkward (inadequate, inappropriate, insufficient, unreasonable) resources. I have taken jobs where I was expected to use a particular tool/suite even though it wasn’t best suited for the deliverable. When I wrestle the Flare (insert tool/suite name of choice here) monster into submission to accomplish something it wasn’t designed for, I gladly place my foot on the heaving chest of the beast, beat my breasts with vigor, and proclaim myself victorious (because no one else will probably ever know or appreciate the heck I went through to get there). I guess that makes me passionate, fanatical, and zealous too.

Tom’s Best Practice Attitudes are a great start to a healthy and productive mental state. In a recent post, Tapping Your Creative Juices (http://www.drexplain.com/isv-kaizen-blog/productivity/tapping-your-creative-juices/) I describe examples of creative “outside the box” thinking. Our industry demands this skill and the efforts we go through to develop and implement creative solutions come with an emotional, chest-beating, price tag. Sometimes that creativity needs to be applied to the deliverable; clear, concise, and complete content. Sometimes that creativity comes into play just to get the tool foisted upon us to cooperate with the project plan. If the Flare/RoboHelp/whatever suites were a compilation of best-of-breed components which could be swapped in and out as better components come along, we could treat them like toolboxes and toolbelts instead of Swiss Army Knives.

Craig Prichard
Technical Communicator
craig.prichard@gmail.com

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 15:02:52 +0000

w0, good points about keeping perspective with the evolution of tools. Your line about losing 120 pages of a disssertation in 1991 made me laugh. I have to wonder whether that comes from personal experience. When I was in college, I had numerous experiences where Word suddenly crashed or lost my document and I was temporarily devastated. But it hasn’t happened to me much now. Maybe it’s because I don’t use Word as heavily or because Word 2007 is much better.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:59:21 +0000

Bill, thanks for commenting here and expanding on your position about tools. I wasn’t trying to quote you out of context. I think what you say is fairly agreeable. In this post I was mostly musing about why tool discussions get to be so bitter. However, I ended up cutting most of those musings out and instead focusing on your thoughts because I think what you said in the exchange on the HATT listserv was more thought-provoking.