Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2005 No comments
Yuck
I didn't realize how dirty my keyboard wrist rest was at the office until I dripped a little water on it and tried to rub it off. I had to get some soap on a paper towel to clean it off.
Friday, September 09, 2005 No comments
The stuff I have to document...
One of the products I write about at work has a command-line interface (CLI) used for debugging and troubleshooting. Customers got wind of it, requested documentation, and that’s usually where I get involved.
One particular (or should I say peculiar) troubleshooting command is “ti_ts” — which starts a troubleshooting routine on some TI chips in the box. I tried to get them to change the name, to no avail. So on this development cycle, they added a “codesperms” command (which translates to “active codes per minislot’). I have a pretty good idea what the next oddly-named command will be, but don’t want to give them ideas just in case one of them stumbles across this blog....
One particular (or should I say peculiar) troubleshooting command is “ti_ts” — which starts a troubleshooting routine on some TI chips in the box. I tried to get them to change the name, to no avail. So on this development cycle, they added a “codesperms” command (which translates to “active codes per minislot’). I have a pretty good idea what the next oddly-named command will be, but don’t want to give them ideas just in case one of them stumbles across this blog....
Wednesday, September 07, 2005 No comments
More FrameMaker 7.2 Leakage
A post on the FrameUsers mailing list (thanks Thomas!) suggests doing a Google search on “FrameMaker new multiple undo” and then reading the cached page from Adobe UK (the first link when I tried it). Doing this turns up some more new features:
A sidebar had links for Solaris and Microsoft updates, suggesting that MacOS users are still left out. Figures.
- multiple undo (one of those long-standing malfeatures I griped about yesterday)
- some support for XML Schema (probably conversion to EDD)
- support for native Photoshop (PSD) files
A sidebar had links for Solaris and Microsoft updates, suggesting that MacOS users are still left out. Figures.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005 1 comment
Adobe Leaks FrameMaker 7.2 Info
In which I take a break from chronicling my personal life and talk about work stuff.
Over the Labor Day weekend, various pages on Adobe’s website mentioned the unreleased version 7.2 of FrameMaker, the preferred tool of the trade for most technical writers (who often affectionately call it “Frame”). Adobe (usually one to hold its cards close to the vest) has since revised the pages, although the old ones lived another day in Google’s caches before those too were updated.
But haste often leads to things getting skipped over, and that was the case with a migration guide white paper on Adobe Germany’s site. I grabbed an unrevised copy of the PDF Tuesday afternoon; the good people at Adobe.de have certainly gone home for the day but I expect the white paper to be sanitized first thing tomorrow morning (by about 2 a.m. EDT).
If you download too late, here’s what searching the PDF for “7.2” turned up in the way of new features:
All this is structure-related, which doesn’t do you much good if you aren’t interested in moving to structured Frame. I’m sure that there will be the usual bug replacements (i.e. removing some known bugs and introducing new bugs) as well.
A group of vendors and trainers have been constantly flogging their “FrameMaker Chautauqua” conference on various mailing lists where FrameMaker is either the main or a common topic. The conference includes presentations by Adobe and will be held in early November, so I expect that Adobe will officially announce version 7.2 either at the conference or shortly before. If I’m right, it’s safe to assume that 7.2 is in beta testing right now.
FrameMaker has languished in a near-limbo pretty much since Adobe bought up Frame Technologies some years back. Frame has benefitted from minor updates from time to time, but long-standing bugs and malfeatures have persisted. That, and an abortive foray into porting the Unix version to Linux, have lead many to believe that Adobe is less than enthusiastic about supporting the program. The final straw for some of us was in January 2004, when Adobe dropped support for MacOS citing lack of sales (largely brought on by Adobe’s reluctance to modernize the MacOS version to run natively on MacOS X, leaving FrameMaker one of the last reasons to ever use the “Classic” environment).
Pretty much all summer, the “Chautauqua” people have been hyping Adobe’s presence at their upcoming conference, promising Frame users that they won’t be disappointed by what Adobe has to say about Frame’s life expectancy. Unfortunately, there’s no word on re-introducing MacOS support, preferably for MacOS X. That’s a show-stopper for me and many others: if the rest of the tool chain works well, why change the underlying platform if one tool is no longer supported?
Personally, even if Adobe repents of Windows-centricity, I’m not convinced that page-oriented WYSIWYG tools like Frame are the way forward for technical writing — in a world where our final output is more likely to be PDF and HTML than paper, it doesn’t make much sense to work on the electronic equivalent of a printed page. It makes more sense nowadays to work with markup, either directly (ooo, icky tags, say my less-technical brethren and sistren) or indirectly through an interface that provides formatting hints but no fixed margins or other page-centric details. LyX is a good example of the latter kind of program.
In the end, I expect little or no surprises come November. I’m certainly not going to ask my boss for $695 + hotel to attend a conference for a tool I’m currently planning to abandon, even if the conference is close enough to drive to.
Over the Labor Day weekend, various pages on Adobe’s website mentioned the unreleased version 7.2 of FrameMaker, the preferred tool of the trade for most technical writers (who often affectionately call it “Frame”). Adobe (usually one to hold its cards close to the vest) has since revised the pages, although the old ones lived another day in Google’s caches before those too were updated.
But haste often leads to things getting skipped over, and that was the case with a migration guide white paper on Adobe Germany’s site. I grabbed an unrevised copy of the PDF Tuesday afternoon; the good people at Adobe.de have certainly gone home for the day but I expect the white paper to be sanitized first thing tomorrow morning (by about 2 a.m. EDT).
If you download too late, here’s what searching the PDF for “7.2” turned up in the way of new features:
- XSL processing at XML import and export (alongside existing read/write rules) — this is a feature I’ve wished for, but (see below) probably won’t get.
- Conversion tables, which add structure to unstructured files, can create a “first draft” EDD (a combination of DTD and style sheet).
- Conversion tables also support a “root element” to be applied to the converted document.
All this is structure-related, which doesn’t do you much good if you aren’t interested in moving to structured Frame. I’m sure that there will be the usual bug replacements (i.e. removing some known bugs and introducing new bugs) as well.
A group of vendors and trainers have been constantly flogging their “FrameMaker Chautauqua” conference on various mailing lists where FrameMaker is either the main or a common topic. The conference includes presentations by Adobe and will be held in early November, so I expect that Adobe will officially announce version 7.2 either at the conference or shortly before. If I’m right, it’s safe to assume that 7.2 is in beta testing right now.
FrameMaker has languished in a near-limbo pretty much since Adobe bought up Frame Technologies some years back. Frame has benefitted from minor updates from time to time, but long-standing bugs and malfeatures have persisted. That, and an abortive foray into porting the Unix version to Linux, have lead many to believe that Adobe is less than enthusiastic about supporting the program. The final straw for some of us was in January 2004, when Adobe dropped support for MacOS citing lack of sales (largely brought on by Adobe’s reluctance to modernize the MacOS version to run natively on MacOS X, leaving FrameMaker one of the last reasons to ever use the “Classic” environment).
Pretty much all summer, the “Chautauqua” people have been hyping Adobe’s presence at their upcoming conference, promising Frame users that they won’t be disappointed by what Adobe has to say about Frame’s life expectancy. Unfortunately, there’s no word on re-introducing MacOS support, preferably for MacOS X. That’s a show-stopper for me and many others: if the rest of the tool chain works well, why change the underlying platform if one tool is no longer supported?
Personally, even if Adobe repents of Windows-centricity, I’m not convinced that page-oriented WYSIWYG tools like Frame are the way forward for technical writing — in a world where our final output is more likely to be PDF and HTML than paper, it doesn’t make much sense to work on the electronic equivalent of a printed page. It makes more sense nowadays to work with markup, either directly (ooo, icky tags, say my less-technical brethren and sistren) or indirectly through an interface that provides formatting hints but no fixed margins or other page-centric details. LyX is a good example of the latter kind of program.
In the end, I expect little or no surprises come November. I’m certainly not going to ask my boss for $695 + hotel to attend a conference for a tool I’m currently planning to abandon, even if the conference is close enough to drive to.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 No comments
Meet the new boss
Current Music: Creation Steppin' Radio
With all the other stuff going on around FAR Manor, I haven't really thought much about impending changes at work. I don't plan to go into deep detail about the workplace, partly because they haven't created a blogging policy. I'll have to talk a bit about the industry, though, for you to make any sense of the following. It's the supply-side of the cable (CATV) business; the company I work for makes cable modems, eMTAs (cable modems with telephone lines built in), and CMTSs (what the cable modems and eMTAs talk to at the other end of the cable). I've been writing the manuals for all but one of the products.
There's a lot of noise from analyst-types about the "triple play" in the cable industry -- that is, data (cable modems), telephony (eMTAs), and digital TV. Lately, I've been devoted full time to the latter. We're building a box that can take a bunch of digital video streams, moosh them around in pre-determined ways, and send them down the cable to your home theater or whatever.
Lately, we've been selling so many eMTAs that the management felt it necessary to divide the company along product lines -- eMTAs on this side, all the headend (cable company) stuff on the other. Just as my former boss hired a contractor to take the eMTA load off me, I got moved to the eMTA side.
I'm not complaining (for a change) -- it looks like I'm going to have an honest-to-God budget and the freedom to roll out web and video editions of documentation. I've been griping for about 7 years that we need to put our documentation online; looks like it might finally happen.
With all the other stuff going on around FAR Manor, I haven't really thought much about impending changes at work. I don't plan to go into deep detail about the workplace, partly because they haven't created a blogging policy. I'll have to talk a bit about the industry, though, for you to make any sense of the following. It's the supply-side of the cable (CATV) business; the company I work for makes cable modems, eMTAs (cable modems with telephone lines built in), and CMTSs (what the cable modems and eMTAs talk to at the other end of the cable). I've been writing the manuals for all but one of the products.
There's a lot of noise from analyst-types about the "triple play" in the cable industry -- that is, data (cable modems), telephony (eMTAs), and digital TV. Lately, I've been devoted full time to the latter. We're building a box that can take a bunch of digital video streams, moosh them around in pre-determined ways, and send them down the cable to your home theater or whatever.
Lately, we've been selling so many eMTAs that the management felt it necessary to divide the company along product lines -- eMTAs on this side, all the headend (cable company) stuff on the other. Just as my former boss hired a contractor to take the eMTA load off me, I got moved to the eMTA side.
I'm not complaining (for a change) -- it looks like I'm going to have an honest-to-God budget and the freedom to roll out web and video editions of documentation. I've been griping for about 7 years that we need to put our documentation online; looks like it might finally happen.
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