I just recently discovered the Communications from DMN podcast. I particularly enjoyed the interview with Anne Gentle of JustWriteClick fame. Anne is a very engaging and enthusiastic speaker and I’d recommend giving this a listen:

http://dmn.podbean.com/2008/09/29/talking-shop-with-anne-gentle/

As a result of realising this podcast exists, I’ve now added it to my Technical Writers’ Podcast Mashup RSS feed:

  http://feeds2.feedburner.com/techwriterpodcasts

Due to the lack of any response to my question on the Content Wrangler forum (http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com/forum/topics/how-can-i-deliver-serverbased – see also my previous post), I’ve been digging around trying to find out more about Madcap’s .NET Help. This isn’t easy as Madcap have not published much documentation for it (although there is an SDK that presumably tells developers what they need to know – but doesn’t help me, as a technical author).

So I’ve been having a dig around on Madcap’s forums and I came across a really interesting discussion (starting in November 2006 and, currently, ending in December last year). This centres around Madcap’s in-your-face branding of their .NET Help Viewer. It had the following problems:

• A big Madcap splash screen that was displayed every time you started up the help,
• Madcap branding on the title bar of the Viewer – rather than the name of the help project.
• Madcap branding in the Help menu called from within the Viewer.

There is much lively discussion in the string of messages. One contributor makes the point that there is no earthly point in Madcap promoting themselves in a Help system that is not going anywhere near anyone who would ever buy, or be remotely interested in, Flare or any other technical authoring application. Another contributor makes the point that I’m sure I would face: customers running a mission-critical IT system do not want to see a big, jokey splash screen suddenly appearing. It reeks of malware! Even the name “Madcap” would set teeth grinding if it appeared in the applications my company produces.

Finally, bowing to the weight and vehemence of the postings, Madcap gets around to providing a way of disabling the splash screen – but no word on configuring the title bar text and icon. As for the help menu, I think there’s a workaround.

One of the interesting things, reading through this, was the exasperation evident in the postings. People really, really wanted to use this product but were unable to because Madcap couldn’t go that extra mile (or 100 yards) for them. And the change from vitriol to delight and gratitude when Madcap staff contributed to the discussion with some positive news was quite touching, although it did seem a bit like: “Thank you for making it possible for us to use your product!”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tenders, proposals, bids – call them what you will, they’re not the standard output of a technical writer, but if you’re working for a company that wins contracts through a tendering process then you can expect to be called on to get involved in writing, editing and/or compiling and polishing your company’s bids.

In this podcast, I give a quick overview of the bid writing process, I describe some of the reasons why technical writers are an obvious choice to join a bid team and I give a few tips for surviving the bid writing process and submitting a completed bid on time.

Extract from the podcast:

As a technical writer asked, or told, to work on a bid, you may feel about it much the same way a developer feels when he's told he has to document the product or features he's just coded. You're naturally inclined to feel like this is not what you signed up for, and that there are lots of better, more important, more appropriate, more interesting things you should be doing.

However, I believe you should try not to feel like this, because it's an important job and it's one that you can probably do better than anyone else, so it's really a chance for you to shine. If you want to raise your profile within the company, you won't get a much better chance of doing so as a tech writer than working on a big contract-winning bid.

Tips:

1. If possible, don't tell people the submission date. If you let on it's a week on Friday, you might not get anything back for editing until a week on Thursday.

2. Get yourself organised. You need a system for tracking the progress of a large bid. Knowing exactly where you are with the bid, even if you're a little behind schedule, will help to keep the stress levels down.

3. Arrange little rewards for yourself and for everyone working on the bid. If you can make the job less of a chore you'll get better results. Bring in cakes when a major section is complete and make plans to go out for a night out the day the bid is submitted.

The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.

I posted the following question on the Content Wrangler forum yesterday, but returning to it today I notice that most of the other posts to the forum get zero responses, so I’m going to repeat this appeal for ideas here, and I’ll try and think of other places I might pose the question.

I'm hoping for some advice on a way to provide server-based online help. The trouble is it can't be Web-based. Does anyone know of something out there that would solve this problem?

We've got a client/server software application that needs user assistance. It can't be traditional client-side HTML Help because this leaves help files on the PC, which not good for us because of the confidential nature of parts of the IT system. For a similar reason (plus some technical reasons) it can't be Web help.

What I'm looking for is a help viewer that will be launched from within a client application but which will fetch it's help topics from the same secure server used by other parts of the application. The help viewer can be located on the client side, but the help topics must be pulled down from the server.

I have had a look at Adobe AIR Help, but this seems to download files to the client and leave them there for use next time, which is no good for our purposes. I have also had a look at Madcap Flare's .NET Help, but I think this is also client-side, plus Madcap supplies very little information about .NET Help which worries me because I'd rather not migrate to a system/method that is poorly documented (unlike HTML Help or Webhelp output from Flare, which is well documented).

So I'm looking for ideas. Am I missing something obvious? Can anyone suggest a solution? Please post a comment below.

I was late leaving work this evening and I was rushing to close down my applications so that I could shut down my laptop. I closed a Word document and immediately pulled the cable to my second monitor. The following error message popped up:

This isn’t a Photoshop job, it’s a real error message, presumably tucked away in some remote corner of Microsoft Word.

Update:

Turns out it's nothing to do with Word (more's the pity). It's a "feature" of Notepad++, which is my text editor of choice right now. I must have been closing down Notepad++ at the same time as Word.