This job just doesn't get boring! We have a lot of really exciting things coming down the pipe. This Monday we have Ralph Robinson joining us to talk about documentation standards. We have a very special announcement to be made at the meeting so please do join us (details are below).

We have a whole new look and feel for our newsletter. Thank you very much, Andrew, for all of your effort. I think we can all agree that it looks really great. Please send a reply to this email, letting him know what you think.

Coming in a few short months we have our own Spring Conference, March 27-29 in Mississauga. Featured speakers include Ann Rockley, Saul Carliner, Michael Priestely, Scott Abel, and Jim Purdy presenting advanced workshops in technical communication. Watch for more details very shortly or email us at conference06@stctoronto.org.

To contribute an article to the newsletter for consideration, please contact our editor at newsletter@stctoronto.org or reply to this email.

At some point in their careers, most technical writers have to produce online help. It used to be a fairly simple task; you bought RoboHelp, wrote the help in Word, and gave your developers a WinHelp file to include with the product. Now, producing online help is more complicated -- there are at least three major help formats for Windows alone, JavaHelp, and several flavours of web-based help to choose from. In this column, I'm going to look at resources to help you in your next help project.

There are few things that I like more than an occasional jaunt to a quality all you can eat buffet. The variety of foods can make your palette tingle and culinary experimentation can give you plenty to experience and discuss. So it was at December's STC Chapter meeting.

Carl Helbich of Iterotext was the featured speaker at the January meeting of the STC Toronto Single-Sourcing SIG. His presentation on controlled authoring and authoring memory introduced us to new ideas in content creation and to a new tool to help us make content more reusable.

As a nominating committee member, I will use the knowledge and experience of working with the local chapter in several different roles to recruit candidates for STC office. I have attended all but one STC conference since 1999, and have increased my network of fellow communicators every year. My experiences at the local and regional levels have sharpened my networking and recruiting skills.

I've been lucky enough to have had little need for résumés. My first employer and I found each other before I left high school, and I was loyal for eight years. In 1969 I emigrated to Canada, where after approaching thirty two companies inexplicably insensitive to my outstanding potential I at last found a job with my second & final full-time employer

There's nothing like an election to illustrate how powerful words are. Politicians, pundits, and the media use words to advance their cause or mercilessly attack opponents. Certain words or phrases are loaded but also vague because they have never been clearly defined.

Championing Standards in Technical Documentation - with Ralph Robinson

Our own internationally acclaimed expert in documentation standards, Ralph Robinson, will discuss why standards are needed; how they are created; and what role the STC plays.

The STC has been actively involved with the development of international standards on many fronts. Through the STC Standards Committee, the Society is currently represented at both the W3C Consortium for WWW Standards and the ISO working group for Software and Systems Documentation standards. Ralph Robinson is one of two official delegates representing the STC on the ISO standards committee. The ISO committee has embarked on a major overhaul effort of current standards and guidelines to structure them in a more user-centered way and update them to account for new technologies in the field of technical communication.

Ralph Robinson is an active senior member of the STC Toronto chapter and a member of ASQ (American Society for Quality). He has been in the technical communication field for over 18 years, dealing exclusively with ISO matters for the last 12 years. He is an independant consultant and author of Documenting ISO 9000: Guidelines for Compliant Documentation.

View meeting information.

The Single Sourcing SIG will be meeting Thursday, February 16th at 7:00 p.m. Hosted by Front-Runner, the meeting will be held in the basement conference room of 21 St. Clair Avenue East.

Please RSVP ssrc@stctoronto.org if you plan on attending. This month's topic is XML Basics.

Bernard Aschwanden of Publishing Smarter will give an introduction to XML (extensible mark-up language). XML is W3C standard and authoring tool independent language. The XML standard allows an enterprise to define its own mark-up languages with emphasis on specific tasks such as data management and publishing. The properties of XML mark-up make it suitable for representing information in an open, platform-, vendor-, and language-neutral manner. XML provides a greater opportunity to reuse this data outside of the sources from which it was derived. XML also helps guide writers in the creation of content.

Publishing Smarter helps people learn about documentation technologies, tools and best practices. They convert legacy documentation from electronic or paper source files. They also develop code for automation of workflows. Publishing Smarter has been delivering publishing solutions to clients since 1992. Their staff include Microsoft, Quadralay, and Adobe certified professionals. They have Certified Technical Trainers and recognized professional speakers who present around the world.

Learn more about XML, DITA and Publishing Smarter here.

Please note that admission is free to all STC members, a $5 cover charge will otherwise apply.

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Samuel Goldwyn

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