Chapter Meeting Information

Date

Speaker

Topic

Sept 6

Anna van Raaphorst

Dick Johnson

Lessons Learned From Two DITA Projects

Topic-based authoring has been a mainstay of technical information development since we first began developing help systems. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) builds content reuse into the authoring process, defining an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing many kinds of information in print and on the Web. Sounds good, but how do we get from concept to production?

Anna van Raaphorst and Dick Johnson, principals at VR Communications, have made the journey and they will share their experiences with us at the September meeting. They will describe two of their DITA projects - one simple and one complex.

The "simple" project is The DITA Open Toolkit User Guide and Reference, their volunteer contribution to the DITA community. The User Guide has 300 topics organized into 20 chapters. They output to PDF, CHM, XHTML, and Eclipse.

A project for a major client was much more complex, including four major documents. They shared many common files between topics. Reuse included images, installation instructions, introductions, and object properties. Besides XHTML and PDF targets, they added JavaDoc and context-sensitive help.

Anna and Dick had done just one joint project before they volunteered to write the User Guide, but their mix of writing and software programming talents was critical. Anna has many years of experience as a tech writer, including structured writing with Framemaker. Dick built a number of reporting and analysis tools.

Whether you are brand new to DITA, kicking the tires, or discussing conrefs like an old pro, you will learn what it takes to make the transition to this new writing technology.

Anna van Raaphorst, Content Specialist, has over 20 years of experience in information architecture, website design and development, writing, editing, indexing, and training, most recently as a member of the technical staff at Skytide, Inc. Formally trained as a linguist, with degrees from Stanford and UCLA, she recently received a certificate in localization from California State University at Chico. Anna has taught college-level courses on localization and emerging technologies for technical writers. She was an early member of CM Pros and organized their 2005 Spring Summit.

Richard H. (Dick) Johnson, Technology Specialist, has over 20 years of experience in software design and development, and in implementing technology and communica-tions solutions. Dick earned advanced degrees in mathematics from UCLA. He has been a software engineer at IBM and Stanford. Dick holds seven patents in storage device hardware and software.

Anna and Dick are active members of the DITA community. They have presented to the Boston and Silicon Valley DITA Users Groups and at the DITA West 2007 conference.

October 4

Nancy Rains

Writing for International Audiences and Translation

When Groucho Marx said, "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana" he probably did not realize that he was illustrating some of the challenges for technical writers working in a global marketplace. How do we make English language documents easy to translate and appropriate for worldwide audiences?

Join us as senior member Nancy Rains shares her insights on strategies to meet these challenges.

• Checking for cultural bias in your materials
• Reviewing the many types of data that are
culture-specific
• Developing a writing style that is accommo-dating to all your readers
• Standardizing vocabulary
• How common word choice errors are more troublesome for those who speak English as a second language.
• Special symbols commonly used in the US that don't production

Nancy Rains has been a technical writer in Silicon Valley for over 10 years. For several years, she managed the Localization and Internationalization SIG for the Silicon Velley STC. She has written documentation for localized software, localization tools, and globalization standards.

Nancy speaks Spanish and Italian and has a BS in Language from the University of California.