@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ How to stretch the affordances of code, besides, technicality, marketing, and ad
Could software documentation:
0. be a mean to explore these contingencies?
1. be an ideal surface to build worlds?
2. be an interface between different knowledges?
3. be a device to trigger different kind of economy around situated software?
@ -26,31 +27,44 @@ Could software documentation:
How can situated practices inform the process of documenting software?
And how can situated software inform the process of technical writing?
## Contents
## Table of Contents (draft)
The thesis is composed of different texts: some provide context and critical background to situate the research, while others consist in experiments of actual documentation written for software developed within our course.
Every piece of documentation will try to reflect on different angles.
The thesis is composed of different texts: some provide context and critical background to situate the research, while others consist in experiments of actual documentation written for software developed within our course. Every piece of documentation will try to reflect on different angles.
The critical and theoretical research will be weaved around the actual documentations, in order to create a discourse and annotate the development of this practice.
More precisely these four aspects will be addressed:
0. **Coding Contingencies**
Situate software as cultural object and proposes documentation as a surface to explore it.
- **Tone and style**
How to make a documentation more accessible? How to create multiple entry points in a complex topic? How to address different kind of users, and not just a generic one?
- Context around software, software studies
- Define software documentation
- **Participation**
Who gets to write, and who is forced to do it? How does development and technical writing interact? Is technical writing a subaltern position in the industry of software development?
- reference, how-to, guide, tutorial
- here we are not focusing on one specific format, bur rather to a form of care (for users, for software, for context)
- **Destination**
Who can read documentation? Who can access? Where is the documentation hosted? How does it relate with a bigger context, if any?
- Introduce issues around software and documentation [probably articulated better later on]
- Propose documentation as a way to address these issues [probably articulated better later on]
- **Susteinability**
How to face the lack of resources when approaching technical writing? Strategies to share workloads and collaboration. Strategies to take care of shared piece of software.
Question: mention the context of situated software here ??
The critical and theoretical research will be weaved around the actual documentations, in order to create a discourse and annotate the development of this practice.
1. **Participation**
Who gets to write, and who is forced to do it? How does development and technical writing interact? Is the technical writer a subaltern position in the industry of software development? What about users?
- Historical overview of how software documentation changed (from printed technical manual to wiki and discord server)
- Printed manuals
- Manpages
- Websites
- Wikis
- Online communities
- Reflection on actors involved and hierarchy (from developers to end-users, gendered work, subaltern work, post-meritocratic manifesto)
## Table of contents (draft)
2. **Destination**
Who can read documentation? Who can access? Where is the documentation hosted? How does it relate with a bigger context, if any?
0. **Coding Contingencies**
Situate software as cultural object and proposes documentation as a surface to explore it. Written as a simulation.
3. **Tone and style**
How to make a documentation more accessible? How to create multiple entry points in a complex topic? How to address different kind of users, and not just a generic one? How to orientate software in the world?
4. **Susteinability**
How to face the lack of resources when approaching technical writing? Strategies to share workloads and collaboration. Strategies to take care of shared piece of software.
