Convergence

I've been fumbling through our existing style guide for the past few days. In keeping with a long-established pattern, I poked and prodded the thing off and on since I was hired. Now that I've committed to a date, I perched lightly on the cusp of disaster and this morning became fairly serious about the whole thing. I like where it's going. With some polishing it will be a much more usable--and hopefully a more used--document than it has been.

We're swimming upstream here. With the style guide comes a package of macros that make the documentation process fairly painless, in theory. The difficulty lies in this: change is reality. People are much more open-minded about theory. They can scratch their chins, sagely level an unfocused stare at a convenient meeting of ceiling and wall, or at their shoelaces, and ponder the impact of a given course of action.

Moving beyond theory to adoption is a different scenario entirely. It entails setting aside established habits and surplanting them with actions that will become new habits. If nothing else, the reality of change requires doing something long enough to say with some validity, "this sucks." Otherwise, one is singled out as a whiner.

The groundwork is laid to make the documentation process much more efficient. Now, to make it a reality...