About Technical Writing
Some thoughts about the business and practices of technical writing.
Technical Writing with Macintosh
What's that? Technical writing? Using the Mac?!?
I admit it. Nay, I speak it proudly. I confess to the world: I write technical documentation, and I use a Macintosh. Someone find me a twelve-step program.
I don't encounter a lot of Macintosh-based technical writers. Certainly, the Mac's smaller user base—as compared to Windows—is a big part of that. But a huge influence on technical writers' choice of platform is the need to deliver Windows-based help systems. While it is possible to produce help for Windows systems using a Macintosh, I wouldn't, were it my bread and butter. RoboHelp is just too slow running in emulation to use on a daily basis.
So why do I do it? How do I manage to make my living as a Mac-based information developer in a Windows-dominant world? Aren't I at a significant disadvantage?
Surprisingly, no.
Cross-platform is where it's at
The IT world is changing, and fewer new enterprise-level applications are Windows-specific (a lot are now available for Linux). Once the reliance on Windows-specific APIs is gone, the Macintosh becomes a contender.
PDF files. Web sites. Flash. These are common delivery formats for documentation and training, today. And they can be authored and delivered just as effectively using a Macintosh as a Windows machine.
Nearly all the applications are available, too: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Dreaweaver, GoLive, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat. The only commonly-used applications not available natively for the Macintosh are RoboHelp and its related products. On the other hand, eHelp Corporation (makers of RoboHelp) has been acquired by Macromedia, so who knows what will happen to that product?
Furthermore, if you're not wedded to Robohelp, there are native help-authoring tools for the Mac, including HelpLogic and QuickHelp.
Virus? What virus?
Parity with Windows in terms of application choice is important, but the Mac has its own unique advantages.
(If this Mac advocacy stuff is old hat to you, skip on to the next section.)
First and foremost is stability and reliability. Mac OS X is Unix-based, and has the robustness and solidness one would expect of an industrial-strength OS. But most remarkable is that to date there are no viruses on Mac OS X. None. Consider how much time, effort, and money the IT industry spends fighting viruses, worms, and trojans.
Second is that Mac OS X is a terrific web development environment. For web authoring, the system comes with Apache, Perl, and PHP pre-installed. Right out of the box, preconfigured.
Third is AppleScript, which has no equivalent on Windows. This scripting language enables you to automate any—and every—application on your system. AppleScripts can run from within applications, or as stand-alone applications in their own right. They can even spawn Unix shell scripts.
Fourth: PDF is the Mac's native graphics language. Every Mac OS X application can output PDF natively, without requiring Adobe Acrobat.
Fifth: The most recent edition of Mac OS X (Panther) has great built-in font management. Mac OS X can work with TrueType, OpenType, and PostScript fonts, not to mention Windows TrueType fonts.
Sixth is ColorSync, Apple's color-matching technology for prepress work. Print shops use Color Sync to maintain color accuracy throughout their production workflow.
And finally, there is the subjective aspect: The Mac is fun to work with. It's elegant, never in your face. Windows XP, by comparison, is cluttered and intrusive, full of gewgaws, unhelpful hints, and behaviors that—at least to me—get in the way of your work.
The fly in the ointment
The only glitch in the rosy picture I've drawn is Adobe FrameMaker. On March 23, 2004, Adobe killed FrameMaker for Macintosh.
FrameMaker is the mainstay of the technical writer, the big gun in long document publishing. There is nothing else on the market that does quite what FrameMaker does.
FrameMaker is Adobe's only Mac-based application that has not been updated for Mac OS X. The primary reason for this is that FrameMaker is a technological dinosaur in Adobe's product lineup. The code base for FrameMaker is ancient, and the application hasn't changed significantly in ten years. It still doesn't have drag-and-drop operations, its use of floating palettes and windows is clumsy and bothersome, and it is the only Adobe application that has not undergone a makeover to bring it in line with the look and feel of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign.
As a consequence of FrameMaker's antique infrastructure, Adobe would not make enough money from sales of FrameMaker to justify the relatively high cost of updating it for Mac OS X. So, for the last three years, the application has languished, and now finally has been put out of its misery.
This is a problem for Macintosh-based technical writers, although not an immediate one. For the moment, FrameMaker 7 still runs well in Classic mode. And so companies and individuals who have much invested in documents generated using FrameMaker will be fine for the next year or two. However, if and when FrameMaker 8 for Windows arrives, cross-platform compatibility will begin to suffer. FrameMaker users will need a migration strategy.
At the moment, there is no obvious contender to replace FrameMaker. Adobe's own next-generation page layout application—InDesign—is an attractive and powerful tool, and is slowly inheriting FrameMaker's long document management features. Perhaps in a future release, it may be up to the task.
As for Windows users of FrameMaker… they should also be wary. The fate of FrameMaker for Macintosh may be the proverbial canary in the coal mine. It is clear that Adobe's revenue from FrameMaker (for any platform) is not sufficient to warrent a rewrite of the application to meet modern standards. Should a future version of Windows evolve far enough to require Adobe to rewrite large portions of the application, I believe that they will more likely kill FrameMaker rather than update it.
Handy tools
I've been using Mac OS X for the better part of two years, and I've come to rely on a handful of third-party utilities to make my life easier.
I should point out that I'm not one of those who is trying to use third-party widgets to change Mac OS X back into Mac OS 9 out of an obstinate refusal to change my habits. I make a point of using the Mac OS X interface more or less as it was designed.
First and foremost is a robust font management utility. I do a lot of design work, and I have hundreds and hundreds of fonts. While the Font Book tool built into Mac OS X Panther is great, it doesn't do two important things: It does not make fonts available to Classic applications (i.e., FrameMaker), nor does it handle extremely large numbers of fonts very well. These issues might be addressed in the future, but for the time being, I am using Extensis Suitcase.
A tip about fonts: Inevitably, you'll need to work with documents from Windows computers. Which means that you'll need the same fonts that your Windows-using counterparts are using. Since Mac OS X can work with Windows TrueType fonts, as well as OpenType fonts (which are cross-platform), all you need to do is find a buddy with a copy of Windows and Microsoft Office who can provide you with these fonts. Then just double-click a TTF font, and Panther will know what to do with it.
Next, learn some AppleScript, so you can write some of your own third-party utilities. Whether you are manging massive templates in FrameMaker, post-processing screen-capture video clips in QuickTime, or changing French accents to HTML entities in a web page, AppleScript can help automate your work. It's not that difficult to learn, and the time savings can be enormous.
One must-have utility is Launchbar. This is a great little application-launching tool. It provides quick keyboard shortcuts for every application and web site on your system. And it learns from your habits so that its list of keyboard shortcuts automatically adapts to your preferences.
For text and HTML, I swear by BBEdit. This is a wickedly powerful text-based code editor. It's configurable, scriptable, flexible, light and fast. I write all my web sites in it (especially now that I've transitioned to CSS-based layout.
At present, I'm not using any add-ons to improve the Open and Save dialogue boxes in Mac OS X, although in the past I used Action Files (and experimented with its ancestor, Super Boomerang). I found that relying on the Mac's own Favorites menu was good enough for me. And now that Panther has a much more robust system for jumping to favorite folder locations, I don't expect to be needing utilities such as Default Folder X. Your mileage may vary.
Dock logic
Finally, I want to talk for a minute about the Dock; the much-maligned, often-cursed Dock.
The problem with the Dock is that it tries to do too much: Program launcher, program switcher, thumbnails for minimized windows, hierarchical menu system. And worst of all, it is located at the bottom of the screen, where it takes up too much valuable real estate, especially on Apple's widescreen LCD displays.
To use the Dock more efficiently, I pin it to the upper right corner of my screen using TinkerTool. I use the Dock for application switching only (not application launching), and as a replacement for the Mac OS 9 hierarchical menus.
Have a look at the way I use my Dock for a more detailed discussion. If you have your own productivity suggestions, please tell me — I'd love to hear about them, and I'll include them here.