Re: context-sensitive help and the printed manual

["Michele Marques" <mmarques -at- cms400 -dot- com>]

Alison Tartt <akt -at- att -dot- net> writes that she has a procedural manual and 
is now being asked to develop screen-based help for context-sensitive 
help on each dialog box. I believe that she would like to use this 
information in her printed manuals, but is not sure where to put this 
information, especially as one dialog box may be applicable to multiple 
procedures (and I assume the inverse is also true!).

This is only a suggestion, based on the assumption that you really do 
want both types of information in the same document. How about you 
have two parts to the manual? The first part is the procedural manual 
(perhaps called the "user guide") while the second part is a reference 
manual of screens/dialog boxes (perhaps called the "reference manual" 
or "reference appendix"). 

In the procedural portion, whenever you refer to one of the dialog boxes 
or screens, you can have a cross reference (e.g., See "doodad dialog 
box" on page App-23) pointing to the help on that dialog box or screen. 
In the help on the dialog boxes you can also include a cross-reference 
back to the relevant procedures. For example: You will access this 
dialog box when creating an order (see page 43) and when updating 
customer records (see page 17).


-------------------------------------------------------
Michele Marques
Lead Technical Communicator, CMS Manufacturing Systems
mmarques -at- cms400 -dot- com        
905-477-4499 x280