Communications from DMN

January 17, 2007

Pros and cons: Open Source doc tools

Filed under: Documentation, Tools, News — DMN Communications @ 11:08 pm

Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for the delay in posting this week’s edition of Communications from DMN.

This week, we discuss the pros and cons of Open Source tools for documentation. On top of that, we have an exciting piece of news to share with everyone. Of course, we present out Pick of the Week: the Tech Writer Voices podcast.

You can find a transcript of this week’s podcast here.

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4 Comments »

Tom Johnson said,

January 19, 2007 @ 8:12 am

I just listened to you guys on the way to work. Thanks for choosing my podcast as your pick of the week! I liked what you said about open source tools — I didn’t know Open Office supported conditional text. I’m surprised that open source tools do this and not professional tools like Word 2007.

I’m glad to see another technical communication podcast and I wish there were more to listen to. When I run out of tech writing related material to listen to, I turn to techie podcasts, like TWIT (This Week in Tech). Someone just recommend Boagworld to me and I like that one quite a bit too. What other podcasts do you recommend listening to? I’m always looking to discover more.

I like all the research and preparation you guys put into your podcast. I’m curious about your setup. Do you use Skype to call each other? Do you use the Levelator to level the varying audio? What tool do you use to record and edit your audio? Finally, why do you read your material? Sometimes I wish you could be more spontaneous in the delivery. But overall you have solid content. Congrats on your upcoming Basecamp presentation in Vancouver.

Thanks so much for your podcast.

Tom
Scott said,

January 19, 2007 @ 9:16 am

Tom,

Thanks for your comments, and the pointers to other podcasts. And thanks for listening. It’s always nice to now that someone is listening …

To answer your questions:

How we record depends on our schedules. Sometimes, we use Skype and record with a little Linux tool chain that I discovered online. At other times, we record individually. I use Audacity to record and edit/level the audio — the noise removal and normalization tools are pretty good but I’ve yet to find (or at least remember!) the optimal settings.

I’ve been experimenting with different mics over the last little while, and resulting audio (even after editing) have been a bit inconsistent. I’ve settled on a simple headset and that seems to be working better.

As for more spontaneity, we’re working on it! Stay tuned.

Scott
Tom Johnson said,

January 19, 2007 @ 11:30 am

I just read your article on working with Audacity to clean up sound — http://www.geeks.com/techtips/2006/techtips-10dec06.htm. Thanks for the tips.

I plan to try out your techniques because the two areas of Audacity you mentioned (noise removal and compressor) are functions I’ve briefly looked at but not fully explored before.

As for audio levels, the Levelator is an interesting tool — http://www.gigavox.com/levelator

Sometimes the Levelator really helps, and other times, particularly when there’s background noise, it can make it worse. But it’s definitely worth trying out, if you haven’t already used it.
Scott said,

January 19, 2007 @ 12:22 pm

Thanks for the pointer to Levelator. It looks like an interesting tool, and I hope that they’re able to put out a Linux version sometime in the near future. I’ll have to check out the Windows version in the meantime.