Stand-alone document files for tech writing are awful. They should not be used as widely as they are.
We used to call editors like MS-Word WYSIWYG -- What You See Is What You Get. Once upon a time, an editor that immediately presented the final rendered doc …
Few things are as distracting as those god-awful side quests.
In this case, I had to search out all of the examples in my new book drafts.
Once upon a time, it was a manual check of code in the book to be sure it made sense.
Ugh. Not …
The (almost) 10-year old 27" Thunderbolt display finally died.
Well, it didn't really die.
The Thunderbolt connector had gotten impossibly flaky. If I looked at it wrong, the monitor glitched or disonnected.
It was dead enough that I wasn't going to deal with it.
It involved this morass of adapters …
more ...I've been an on-and-off user of LaTeX since the very, very beginning. Back in the dark days when the one laser printer that could render the images was in a closely-guarded secret location to prevent everyone from using it and exhausting the (expensive) toner cartridges.
A consequence of this is …
more ...Here are some links to reviews: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1801077266/ref=cm_cr_unknown?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1#reviews-filter-bar
These are reviews of Python Object-Oriented Programming: Build robust and maintainable object-oriented …
more ...I have to admit, it's very difficult to respond to this comment. I have to fight down the urge to say things like "The Reader is not an idiot," or "At some point, we have to assume they've seen a computer before."
AFAIK there's little or no useful data data …
more ...A pragmatic description of a language (like Python) from axiomatic -- or really axiom-like -- foundations is exasperatingly hard. I don't think I have any answers, but I sure do have a lot of challenges. I think there's a path that involves a lot of "don't look down -- just edge along the …
more ...There are patterns to bad writing. I'll give some examples based on a blog post I was sent. It's also based -- indirectly -- on some of proposals I saw for PyCon and PyDataDC.
For the conference calls for papers, I can ask a few questions of the author, but that's about …
more ...Read this: http://thesweetsetup.com/apps/our-favorite-pro-writing-app-for-mac/
What I have been doing instead of using these sophisticated, integrated writing tools?
I use OmniOutliner. https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner I've used it for years. It does a lot of things. Most notably, I can create multiple columns so that I can …
more ...One word: "wow" More words: "Helping shy people get up and do what needs to be done." Yes, that's Garrison Keillor's tag line for one of the "sponsors" of "A Prairie Home Companion": the Powdermilk Biscuits company. (Heavens. they're tasty and expeditious.) The folks at Lynda are truly great at …
more ...