Guest post by Ed Marshall
Over the course of my technical writing career, I've been fascinated with the power of computers to do certain repetitive tasks. This goes back to my tenure at Digital Equipment Corporation where I had to recreate the manuals for an in-house text processing system. I ran into problems with one manual where I had to make large-scale edits to the coding (similar to HTML tags) to get the book to build. Using a powerful text editor made this task doable in the time I had.
Since then, I've used advanced text editors, search-and-replace tools, and file/folder comparison tools to help me solve the following types of problems:
- Analyzing different versions of text-based output to determine what changed.
- Resolving the changes made by multiple writers who accidentally worked for 2 weeks in the source files for a large product. The source files were in a proprietary binary format so direct comparisons could not be done.
- Determining which files to merge from branches in SVN/Perforce back into the main development tree.
- Determining the extent of work needed for unplanned activities such as product name changes by searching for instances of “old Product name”, even in binary files.
- Quickly pasting information from Word files to FrameMaker using a text editor to strip out Word's formatting.
- Quickly pasting information from FrameMaker files into an HTML file with the correct HTML coding and using an HTML wizard built-in to a text editor.
- Sorting lengthy lists of error messages in text files, such as HTML, which made it easier for users to find a specific error message (and found many instances of duplicated messages in those lists).
- Keeping my computers safe from the “evil-doers” of the world by using an effective, affordable, and reliable set of internet security tools.
- Practicing “safe computing practices” by regularly backing my data, e-mail, and other files.
My webinar tomorrow [get more information and register at the link] will discuss and demonstrate the tools that I have found useful, reliable, and effective at solving these problems/performing these tasks and will provide sources of information on shareware/low-cost tools.
Ed Marshall is an independent consultant, technical writer, and the sole proprietor of Marshall Documentation Consulting, with over 22 years in technical writing. He specializes in API (application programming interfaces)/SDK (software developer's kits)/Web Services products and other types of documentation aimed at developers. Over his career, Ed has developed expertise in using tools to “let the computer do the work,” such as advanced tools for editing files, comparing files, and searching/replacing text in files.