"The following are my suggestions regarding what else to consider for each of Daryl White’s excellent questions about choosing a toolset for documenting a software product or project.

I have appended a brief guide to the main/broad categories of documentation toolsets and some of the platforms/components that are popular in each.

Finally, this resource ends with a table of possible solutions for various scenarios you might find yourself in.

Before we start with the existing list of questions, I want to highlight one that I think is most important of all, but which is often assumed by people who create these kinds of guides, as they tend to come from one or another world already.

What are you documenting?

When it comes to software technical writing, the more appropriate way to ask this might be: For what user roles is your documentation intended?

For graphical end-user interfaces (GUIs), the largest range of docs tooling is available, but here some of the more commercial turnkey tools have most of their advantages.

For administrator interfaces (installation, configuration, etc), again any tooling will work, but we start seeing real advantages for lightweight markup, codebase integration, and version control.

For developer interfaces, docs-as-code offers significant advantages. Developers can better contribute directly, and it’s generally friendlier for coded samples. APIs (native and remote), SDKs, and CLIs are almost certainly best documented in a docs-as-code environment, even if you integrate it with a more conventional platform for end-user docs."

https://gist.github.com/briandominick/d4cbe11228de0ebe31cda630976af4ef

#TechnicalWriting #SoftwareDocumentation #Documentation #DocsAsCode #TechnicalCommunication #InformationArchitecture #CCMS

#TechnicalWriting #SoftwareDocumentation #DITA #CCMS: "Whether we are talking about technology, governments, business, culture, or the environment – we live in a world of constant change. In our field of work, many of us see changes impact our documentation on a weekly, if not daily, basis. To keep pace with these changes and maximize content reuse, it has become standard practice to employ some form of topic-based authoring tool.

However, when technical communication professionals consider their content authoring and management strategies, the best solution is not always clear. Does it require a component content management system (CCMS) based on the Darwin Information Type Architecture (DITA)? Or will a more general solution for topic-based authoring provide the necessary features?"

https://tcworld.info/e-magazine/intelligent-information/dita-vs-topic-based-authoring-systems-1301/

***Rare vintage embalming book***
Reminiscences of Early Embalming by J. H. Clarke
The Sunnyside, New York, 1917
(read it at the link below!)

Joseph Henry Clarke, born in 1840 in Indiana, began his studies in anatomy and chemistry. He attended a medical college until he was called to serve in the Civil War. After the war, he became a bookkeeper and salesman for a coffin company.

As he interviewed undertakers about preservation, he was driven to experiment with embalming. He and a colleague began training embalmers in 1882, and Clarke eventually founded the Cincinnati College of Embalming in 1899. It was arguably the first mortuary school established in the United States. The school is still in operation today, giving Clarke the distinction of being the "founder of American embalming schools."

Clarke's reminiscences were published at the time of his death in 1917, but few copies of the book remain today. The archives staff at the Cal State East Bay University Library graciously agreed to scan the entire book at my request and make the PDF available online.

You may download and read it at http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/224456 (using this link allows them to track usage, and I want to repay their kindness by sending lots of traffic their way!)

#HisAndHearsePress #MortuarySchool #MortuaryScience #Embalming #CivilWar #Undertakers #CSUEB #CCMS #History #HistoryLesson #CSUEastBayLibrary #CincinnatiCollegeOfMortuaryScience #LibrariansRock #ILoveLibrarians #LibrariansRunTheWorld