How Learning SQL can Help your Technical Communication Career

By Ugur Akinci

© 2010 Ugur Akinci SQL stands for “Structured Query Language” and is pronounced either as “S-Q-L” or “sequel”. It is the most wide-spread language used around the world today for interacting with relational databases. If you already know or planning to learn SQL you have a great advantage over those technical communicators who don’t since…

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Reusable Components in Structured Authoring

By Ugur Akinci

© Ugur Akinci It is useful to take an inventory of all the reusable components (text strings) in your technical documents as a prelude to structured authoring. Whether you use DocBook, DITA, or some other XML-based system, identifying the reusable components in your documents is an important prerequisite before you make the switch to XML-based…

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What a Technical Writer Should Know About DocBook?

By Ugur Akinci

© 2009 Ugur Akinci DocBook is a set of tools for implementing XML (Extended Markup Language)-based structured documentation. It is developed back in 1991 and is widely used today by those technical writers who generate single-sourced documentation. It is especially well suited for software, hardware and networking documentation. A DocBook set includes the DocBook DTD…

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What's the Best Way to Learn Structured XML-Based FrameMaker?

By Ugur Akinci

© 2009 Ugur Akinci FrameMaker (FM) is a great and popular technical writing tool with XML-based single-sourcing functionality. But its learning curve is rather steep. So how does a technical writer teach him- or herself structured FrameMaker? What’s the best way to learn? Here are my suggestions, based on my ten years of Fortune 500…

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