Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Documentation Blog : WDK Doc Team

WDK Documentation Feedback Results for 2008

wdkblog — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:26:00 GMT

The WDK documentation team is listening. That is, if you click the "Send feedback on this topic" link (ddksurv1@microsoft.com) that is included at the end of each WDK topic to send feedback about that topic, we investigate, and if necessary fix, your issue with that topic. We are happy to get your feedback because we are always striving to improve the WDK documentation. The following table shows the breakdown of feedback that we received and investigated in 2008 by technology. This feedback only applies to customers of the WDK (the actual kit) and not to customers who access the WDK documentation from MSDN.

Technology	Number of feedback messages
Kernel Architecture	23
Installable File System	18
Tools	16
Networking	14
Storage	11
Display	6
Input	5
Print	4
WDF-KMDF	4
WDF-UMDF	3
Streaming Media	2
Buses and Ports	2
Audio	1
Device Installation	1
Infrared	1

- John Jackson [MSFT], WDK Senior Programming Writer

How Editing Works at the WDK

wdkblog — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:00:00 GMT

The quality of what you read when you install the Kit or visit MSDN is very important to us here at the WDK. Of course, good quality starts with careful work by our writers. However, the final touches are added by the editors. Our editing process includes several things that help you in ways that you may not realize. First, we examine language to make sure that it’s clear. This might mean that we break up long sentences, or provide definitions for new terms. Then we fix any problems with grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Finally, we examine the formatting to give it a consistent feel. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes the content easier to use if function names are always bold.

An editor’s best friend is a good style guide, and we have a couple. In most cases we are covered by the Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (MSTP), which is used by much of the software industry. It provides guidance on how to talk about applications, files and so on. For things that are more specific to driver programming, we use our own WDK style guide. This lays out how to talk about such driver specifics as IOCTLs. There are few places in the publishing world that cover as much of the operating system kernel as we do, and this requires a specialized set of terms and concepts. We are always looking for ways to improve our style guide, frequently in response to customer feedback. One improvement in the past year is the addition of lib information to our reference pages.

An especially important thing for readers is the searchability of our documentation. Editors maintain our index, which is helpful for structured searches of the compiled help offline. We also make our pages as easy to find online as possible. To do this we optimize topics for search engines, with editorial standards that include suitable placement of key search words on each page.

Another priority is to make content easy to understand for our international audience. Editors work toward this goal by making sentence structures as simple as we can, and by avoiding ambiguous words and complex verb forms. A simplified vocabulary is enforced by a tool developed at Microsoft for our writing teams.

When you attend conferences and plugfests, the people that you interact with are most likely to be developers. But be aware that when you give us feedback on the documentation, your thoughts are likely to reach an editor. We are eager to hear from you, whether it’s about a feature of the documentation such as the index, or about a gap in the description of your favorite function. Please send us any suggestions for improvements—you can be sure that we’ll listen, and unless you want to be anonymous you’ll even hear back from us.

— John Osborne, [MSFT], Editor, WDK

Open Request for Windows Drive Kit Documentation Feedback

wdkblog — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:59:00 GMT

A recent post on one of the OSR forums (http://www.osronline.com/cf.cfm?PageURL=showLists.cfm?list=ntdev) detailed some of the issues the driver development community has with the documentation. I'd like to invite anyone that has feedback to use this thread to let us know how we're doing... Specifically:

What are we doing well, that you'd like to see more of?
What we could do better?
What's completely broken -- impairing your ability to write great device drivers?

I commit to reading every response, and if you leave an email alias I'll be happy to acknowledge your feedback, and if actionable, create a tracking bug that we'll use to track the issue to completion.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback, no matter how critical. I look forward to a lively discussion.

Keith Boyd, Sr. Content Publishing Manager [MSFT]

WDK Doc Team Invades WinHEC 2008

wdkblog — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:46:00 GMT

In case you are one of the lucky ones who will be going to WinHEC next week, be sure to look for people wearing these name badges:

Keith Boyd, our new WDK Senior Content Publishing Manager (the boss)
John Jackson, Senior Programming Writer (specialist in Virtual Machines and User Mode Display drivers)
Karlito Bonnevie, Programming Writer (specialist in File Systems)
John Osborne, Technical Editor (familiar with a wide range of technologies)

Yes, the WDK documentation team is sending four of our finest to Los Angeles for the week. If you see any of these four, be sure to tell them what you like and don't like about the WDK documentation. They've come all that way, just to listen to you!

In particular, Keith will be part of a panel discussion on "The Windows 7 Windows Driver Kit" on Friday, November 07, 2008, along with Jennifer Stepler and Craig Ziegler (WDK gurus). They will be telling you about all the exciting things that are coming in the new kit.

For those of you who can't attend, you can read Keith's daily blog reports from the convention floor.

What the heck is WinHEC?

WinHEC is the annual Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference and will be held this year in Los Angeles, November 4-7, 2008. For more information about the 140 technical sessions, panels, and chalk-talks at WinHEC, see http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/

— Seth McEvoy, [MSFT], WDK Doc Blogmaster

Under New Management

wdkblog — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 02:05:00 GMT

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to the Windows driver development community. My name is Keith Boyd, and I joined the WDK/WLK documentation team as Senior Manager about four months ago. I’m excited and humbled to be a part of this important team at Microsoft.

While many management changes are accompanied by bold promises of a new organizational direction, I instead will commit to staying the course, and continuing the positive work begun by my predecessor. Recent documentation surveys have indicated that the overall quality of our WDK/WLK documentation is improving. Through a steady program of talent recruitment and retention, and targeted reinvestments in high-value content, I intend to continue moving this team forward.

I came to the WDK team after an eight year stint with the Windows Client organization, where I supported a number of different platform technologies as both a writer and as a manager, including:

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
The Windows Shell and Common Controls library
Internet Explorer 6
XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) and User Interface Automation
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA)

While I am not a driver developer by trade, I’ve successfully managed developer documentation teams at Microsoft for nearly five years. The opportunity to move into driver documentation was a fascinating one for me, as I see it as a prime opportunity to improve the customer and partner experience with Windows. In my experience, software engineers require the following in order to be successful:

Up to date and technically accurate documentation
Thorough conceptual material that describes and enables key scenarios
Accompanying samples that are well commented and demonstrate key concepts
A responsive writing team that takes the needs of its community seriously
Accountable and accessible management dedicated to improving the documentation experience

These principles will guide the WDK/WLK Documentation team while I’m manager.

In the coming months, the documentation team will be focused primarily on writing and delivering content in support of Windows 7. Our first release of content will correspond with the public Beta, due in early 2009. In addition, the team will be engaging in the following activities:

Reinvesting in the team blog, in order to provide better insight into our activities and provide a channel for customer feedback.
Completing documentation Road Maps for each device technology in the WDK.
Attending WinHEC (four members of the documentation team will be present) and collecting community feedback from participants.
Targeted reinvestment in key technologies that will improve the driver development experience, including a focus on Kernel Mode Architecture.
Releasing the WDK version 18002 to correspond with Windows Server 2008 R2.
Investigating documentation localization strategies to improve the customer experience for customers outside of North America.

I will be attending and speaking this year at WinHEC, where I’m very looking forward to meeting and engaging with members of the community. If you have any feedback, ideas, or concerns about the WDK/WLK documentation that you’d like to share with me, I encourage you to email me directly (keith.boyd@microsoft.com). I look forward to engaging with the Windows driver development community for years to come.

— Keith Boyd, [MSFT] WDK Senior Content Publishing Manager

The new and improved WDK doc blog is coming soon to a computer near you!

wdkblog — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:09:00 GMT

The WDK documentation group has a new management team who are taking the WDK doc blog in new directions. In the next few months, we are planning to increase our blog postings to bring you:

More info, more often
More input from device driver developers
More of what you want, when you want it

The WDK doc team wants to do more to help developers get all the accurate and up-to-date information they need to write great device driver code. But we need your help and we need to hear more about what our blog can do for you. We’d like to use this blog to start a dialog with the developer community to get more feedback on what you need from our documentation.

One of our new directions is to add a lot of new content to the WDK doc blog. The blog format will allow us to get you new information faster than ever before. Some of the content we’re currently working on will include:

New driver developments
Bug fixes
Changes in the driver models
Operating system updates
Alerts for features no longer supported
Hints and tips
Best practices

Let us know what else you’re interested in.

Contact me, seth.mcevoy@microsoft.com with any comments, suggestions, or complaints. I’ll be working with our expert team of writers and editors to help you get the best quality technical information. We’d really like to hear what your top priority needs are.

I volunteered to manage the new WDK doc blog because I feel it’s important for us reach out more directly to the developer community. I’m hoping your feedback will help us streamline the flow of information from Microsoft to you. In the 17 years I’ve been at Microsoft, it has always been my goal to find new and better ways to help developers. That’s what I want to do with both this blog and in my work as the new programming writer for the kernel section of the WDK docs.

Over the years, my career has changed and grown along with Microsoft. I’ve worked on the kernel operating system for Microsoft Interactive Television, was a technical editor at Microsoft Press, worked on OLE/COM, Vector Markup Language, and AppleScript for Office products, and wrote three programming books on Windows Media technologies. Before Microsoft I wrote children’s books, video game programs, and even wore at tie while working for IBM. I don’t know what happened to that tie, but thankfully I don’t have to wear it any more. I’m much happier at Microsoft, busy in my robot-filled office, learning everything I can about the latest kernel developments.

I really want to hear from you. Let me know what our blog can do to help you create great device drivers!

— Seth McEvoy, [MSFT], WDK Doc Blogmaster