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Cherryleaf survey results - Use of single sourcing solutions
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During March and April 2003, Cherryleaf carried out an online survey into the current trends in technical communication. One of the questions we asked was:
- Do the people directly involved with user assistance development at your organization use a single sourcing authoring solution?
Our findings
Our findings are summarised in the pie chart below:
Do the people directly involved with user assistance development at your organization use a single sourcing authoring solution?
Response |
Percentage |
Yes - We use a single sourcing authoring solution |
35.9 |
No, but we plan to in the next 12 months |
11.9 |
No |
48.5 |
Yes, but we plan to stop doing so in the next 12 months |
1.5 |
Don't know |
2.2 |
n=134
Conclusions
Based on these findings, it would seem likely that nearly a half of all the user assistance development will be carried out using a single source authoring solution in the next 12 months. This, combined with our findings on the uptake of new Help trends, indicates that most technical communicators will be using software with very powerful capabilities in the forthcoming years.
Article on single sourcing
Justin Darley has written an article on single sourcing.
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