Readme files with references to fixed bugs

Subject: Readme files with references to fixed bugs
From: "Gilda Spitz" <gspitz -at- longview -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 16:37:08 -0400

In addition to books and online help, our Documentation group also
provides readme/release note files.

Up to now, those files have been very simple txt files, describing the
various components of the software, providing contact information, and
so on. If there's a major change since the last release, we mention it,
but we don't provide details.

I have now been asked to provide much more detail on each release.
Apparently some of our users want a bug-by-bug description for each
minor release, so that they can decide whether to upgrade or not. (It's
a complex enterprise-wide product, so they don't necessarily want to
upgrade every time.)

This is my opportunity to change the format from txt to something with
hypertext links - either Acrobat or HTML. And I'm delighted with that.
But I'm struggling to find a way to provide the bug list.

We have an internal database in which we log bugs (er....issues). There
are sometimes hundreds of issues logged per release, and some of them
are just typo fixes, etc. It would be difficult to decide which fixes
are important enough to be listed, and I really don't think we want to
list them all.

I've been looking at readme files from all sorts of other software, to
get ideas, and that has helped. But I need more input.

Has anyone out there had a similar problem? I'd love to hear your
solution. Thanks in advance.

Gilda Spitz
Manager, Documentation
Longview Solutions Inc.


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