Designing Tools to Aid Technical Editors: A Needs Analysis

The goal of this research was to understand the technical editing process in the development of large technical documents. In particular our goals were: to identify the needs of technical editors that might be supported by the use of computer-based tools; and to understand the editing process as it is relevant to the design of these tools. The research was conducted by mail, using a modified Delphi technique. A group of technical editors from across the United States, who were considered to be experts by their peers, responded to three questionaires. The results of this research provide a description of the technical editing environments, the editing problems, and the editing tools used by these experts.