8   Writing and Production Software

Other Useful Software

Besides word processing and online authoring software, other types of software may be useful.

Flowcharting software – lets you create flow diagrams and decision trees. Usually as easy to use as clicking and dragging the shapes into place and linking them together with lines and arrows.

Graphics or drawing software – lets you create a wide range of graphics such as line art or logos. While they often come with a large selection of clip-art, the quality of the graphics produced depends largely on the skills of the person using the software.

Photographic software – lets you size, crop, touch up, or change any aspect of digital photographs. Essential if you want to include photos.

Optical character recognition ( ocr) software – lets you scan a page of text into a word processor file. Essential if you don’t have the word processor files and you want to avoid retyping the text. Only works well if you have a good quality print copy without a lot of fancy formatting.

Compression software – lets you compress files, significantly reducing their size so they can be emailed quickly or copied to disk.

Screen capture software – lets you capture and manipulate screen images. Essential if the screens are not from a Windows program and you don’t have a good way of capturing them. For Windows programs, you can use the print screen feature.

Forms software – lets you create professional-looking forms. While most forms can be created using a word processor or desktop publishing program, it’s not always easy.

Project management software – lets you plan and track your manual writing project and produce great-looking schedules and progress reports. Since this software is relatively complex to use, and project information needs to be updated frequently, most manual writers don’t use it, but rely on simpler, paper-based methods instead. An exception might be if you are already using project management software for another project.