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Subject:RE: True insignificance... and release notes From:jgarison -at- ide -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 6 Mar 2002 17:08:54 -0500
We do release notes in a fairly efficient fashion:
The QA manager creates two views of the bug database: one that shows bugs
fixed in this release, one that shows all the known bugs.
Up until the last release, I as the doc manager drew the short straw and
wrote up the little tidbits that we placed into the Release Notes Text field
in the bug entries in the database. (This last release it just got too big
for me to handle alone and I roped a couple of my writers into helping out.
Basically, we each took a third - top, middle, bottom - and wrote the
blurbs.) We write new text for the known bugs, and change the old text to
make it sound like it's been fixed for the fixed bugs.
Once the bugs have been either documented or "hidden", the QA Manager
creates an output file of the release note text along with the bug number.
Since the output file is in HTML, I import it into Word, delete extraneous
columns in the table, convert the table to text, hide the bug numbers, and
apply a couple of very basic styles.
Then I print to PDF and send it to the CD generator person (who also happens
to be the QA Manager).
We do a separate "What's New" document for new features in the release.
My 2¢,
John
John Garison
Documentation Manager
IDe
150 Baker Avenue Extension
Concord, MA 01742
Release Notes is the single most hated writing assignment. Everyone in the
flight path ducks and covers whenever they are mentioned.
I'd love to hear from some folks who do these efficiently.
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