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Subject:RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question From:"Spreadbury, David C." <David -dot- Spreadbury -at- marconi -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 28 Nov 2001 12:44:21 -0500
There are a lot of writers to document software only that don't realize that
it can, at times, be real easy to kill the user or completely destroy a
piece of equipment if procedures are not followed EXACTLY.
Some also lose site of the fact that similar consequences can occur, even in
the software.
I know that if I was configuring a large switch network, with several
hundred or possibly thousands of connections, that a WARNING, early on, to
frequently save the configuration file (<save cfg>?) to eliminate the
possible need to do it all over again because I made one little misstep
(totally hypothetical situation). This misstep may not do any physical
damage to me or the equipment, but it might cause me to want to go looking
for the writer who didn't warn me about such a possibility. What does it
cost to make a procedure user friendly? A simple one sentence entry that
could possibly save me hours of rework? Cheap price if you are the one that
took that misstep.
-----Original Message-----
From: bryan -dot- westbrook -at- amd -dot- com [mailto:bryan -dot- westbrook -at- amd -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:29 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
It seems that there is a bit of tunnel vision among technical writers in the
software industry to not see the hardware around them.
Anyone whose ever written electrical system troubleshooting for the military
is probably very familiar with the phrase "may cause death or injury to
personnel" (or something very similar). I wouldn't call it a design flaw
that you have to have the electrical current of a circuit turned on to test
for the presence of that current.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Hall [mailto:dhall -at- san-carlos -dot- rms -dot- slb -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 9:26 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question
I agree with Dick on this one. Warnings are
frequently necessary for reasons other than
design flaws.
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