AutoCAD--Project of the Week

Lovely to get that ESL textbook business out of the office. What a mess those books were!

This week, it's AutoCAD, AutoCAD, punctuated by a short stint with Macintosh server documentation.

What's AutoCAD, you say? It's software designed to help folks who produce architectural, mechanical and engineering drawings. We've come a long way from lonely draftsmen leaning over slanted platforms and meticulously penciling and inking these drawings by hand with rulers on one side and compasses on the other. AutoCAD has all kinds of features to make both two-dimensional drawings and three-dimensional models easier to create. But there are lots of complex features. Indexing these 756 pages will take awhile, but this particular book (another in the For Dummies series) is clearly written, making indexing that much easier. The most fun part is seeing the pictures of 3D models when they're all done.

The Mac server documentation project is an update of their standard vocabulary that I created a couple of years ago. I also indexed all the documents myself last year. Now, with my updated standard vocabulary, the technical writers can hopefully continue the consistency I created for the indexes and keep them truly useful for users. We'll see, though. Often technical writers have very little time to put together text, much less tweak or create indexes. You can take a writer to a standard vocabulary, but will he/she use it? That's the question.

Modern Religions and....ESL Textbooks

March 16, 2008

Finishing up Modern Religions For Dummies today. I did, indeed, have to deal with some interesting "political" issues with terms and cross-references. Like, after you cross-reference from God to Allah and Yahweh, do you also cross-reference to Jesus and the Holy Spirit? Well, that's hard to say. For Christians, the answer is yes, but for Jews and Muslims, no. Any way I do this, I'm bound to offend someone, I suppose. I'm thinking about just putting "Jesus as" under "God" and leaving the rest of the stuff about Jesus just under his name. The Holy Spirit I haven't decided on yet. It's been real interesting indexing this particular overview of the Abrahamic religions. The authors have a very engaging style and have brought out a number of fascinating facts about the development of each religion that I didn't know. And I'm rather well read on the subject. Anyone who'd like a good perspective on these religions should take a look.

Last week, I also got a new project, short deadline, to add the Teacher Edition material to the extant indexes of a set of textbooks on English as a Second Language (ESL) for what looks like late elementary or middle school kids. It is most unfortunate that the index for the student edition isn't really an index at all, but an artificial hierarchical list of terms with no detailed terms as main entries. Rather frustrating to just add "t" page numbers for all sorts of pedagogical headings buried under very general topics like "Literary Analysis, " "Language and Grammar," and "Vocabulary." But we provide what the client wants, and with the short deadline, we can do no more. I'll be glad when that project is out of here.

Later on this week, I get to tackle AutoCAD (CAD=computer-aided design) material. I've worked with this stuff before. It should go pretty fast once I get started.

Biochem Wrapped Up--Now for God and Office

Biochemistry was, in fact, a bit of a bear to index, but I did learn some cool stuff about how enzymes and DNA work in our bodies. But, it was somewhat slow going for the rate of pay.

This week, I'll be working a couple of contrasts: A beginner's guide to Microsoft Office 2007 (easy and fast), and Modern Religions For Dummies. Modern Religions seems to be an overview of the three Middle Eastern origined monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Should be a good review, but I have to be careful not to phrase things or choose terms that might offend one group or another. A delicate task.

Biochemistry--Project of the Week

Well, not sure I'll do a book like this again, particularly not for the usual page rate for this publisher. So many chemical names that are only slowly typed in. It's actually a pretty good read (and this coming from a total non-chem person). The Dummies folks do hire writers who can clarify complex material and inject just the right amount of humor to keep things interesting.

But indexing this material is a bit of a bear.....back into enzyme kinetics.....send sympathy, please!