We've Come A Long Way

By Diana Wray Wilcoxson

I began my career in the technology field thirty years ago as a programmer aid at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara. Over the years, I have used a number of different writing tools. Here are my experiences with some of them.

At National Semiconductor, I was responsible for entering programs that the more senior group members had written, compiling these programs, and debugging them when necessary. When I advanced to the position of applications programmer, I began writing my own internal and external specifications. This is where my technical writing began.

The Beginning: Archaic Languages

Due to company restructuring, I was transferred into the technical publications department. (Note: applications programmer = technical writer!) At the time I was using Script/370 to write any necessary documentation. For those of you who have never heard of Script/370, it is an embedded language (similar to HTML tags) that ran on an IBM 370 mainframe. Once the scripting was compiled, it generated a scripted file with the formatting that I had specified. If there were errors in the scripted file, cryptic error messages were generated in the finished file, which made finding these non-specific errors like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I left National Semiconductor for the computer languages lab at Hewlett-Packard. It was here that I got my technical writing training. I became very familiar with TDP/MANU which was also a very archaic embedded language. Just like Script/370, TDP/MANU also used embedded commands and generated a file with non-descriptive error messages if there were problems. During the six years that I spent at HP, I can remember generating final copy for manuals that had not been proofed because of the problematic text generating process and printer problems. It always amazed me that a prestigious company like HP would have such elementary tools to produce the many manuals that were generated every year.

Moving Ahead: FrameMaker

When I left HP, I took on a long-term contract in Silicon Valley. It was here that I first used FrameMaker. What a relief! The concept of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) was totally foreign to me at that point, but I had no problem adjusting. I learned to use FrameMaker on the job and cranked out around thirty-two "product briefs" within a short period of time as compared to the tedious process I'd used previously. I was hooked!

Backpedaling: Nroff/Troff

When my husband landed a job in Berkeley, we made the decision to move to the East Bay. I began working for a medium-sized company in the East Bay that was using Nroff/Troff to write their documentation. This was quite a step backward for me. It was certainly not WYSIWYG. Compared to FrameMaker, using Nroff/Troff was like sweeping the carpet with a broom when you've been used to using a vacuum cleaner.

A Final Word

Since these early experiences, I have been contracting at many different companies. I have used Word and FrameMaker extensively. I must say that the tools that were available in my early career do not compare to those available today. Even the more recent versions of MS Word are a lot more reliable than earlier ones. For example, I can remember having to generate a table of contents by hand when a newly written manual consisted of more than one hundred pages. And don't even mention online help or HTML. These would take another whole article to write about.

The Devil Mountain Views -- Jan/Feb 2002
(ebstc.org/newsletter/front.html)
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