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Subject:RE: Yes, a real value, Was Real Value? From:Richard Smith <rsmith -at- rapidlogic -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 27 Nov 2000 14:04:34 -0800
Tim Alton wrote:
>They don't need manuals to be "Dummies" books. When they consult the
manual, they're under the gun, on the job, maybe in a muddy field in the
rain or up against a deadline with the boss yelling down the hall. To hell
with interesting. They need a way out of an impasse, and they need it now.>
Whoa! That's a very broad assumption about what users want. I think it's
just plain wrong. It may describe your audience, but not everybody's.
I just saw that the Help file for Sonic Foundry's Siren Jukebox won an award
(from STC I think). Are users of its help file under the gun? I doubt it. I
wasn't.
I recently used an online tutorial for Meta-Creation's Canoma, a 3-D image
modeling application. I can confirm that I was not under the gun, and I
swear to you that it being interesting mattered to me! Don't be so quick to
dismiss what Andrew rightly states about writing skill.
Surely there are situations where people are under the gun, but it is not
every time someone consults a tech doc. Nobody here is doubting the benefits
of structure, in fact, structure and repetition are among the things that
make tech docs easier to read.
Richard Smith
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