RE: Legislation covering User Manuals

Subject: RE: Legislation covering User Manuals
From: Jim Shaeffer <jims -at- spsi -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 10:43:19 -0400


A debate about whether the documentation is wrong or the
system is wrong seems pointless. Obviously, the product is
wrong. The maker of the product should:

change the system to match the documentation,
OR change the documentation to match the system,
OR change both to match some 3rd standard.

The fact that we usually see the documentation as wrong is
just a by-product of the fact that changing the document is
usually the cheapest fix.

Jim Shaeffer (jims -at- spsi -dot- com)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Murrell [mailto:trmurrell -at- yahoo -dot- com]
>
> I realize this all sounds familiar to anyone who has worked
> in a software environment; it's really a common situation.
> What was a new expeience for me was sitting in a conference
> call with a German engineer who was insisting that the
> system wasn't functioning properly BECAUSE the documentation
> said the opposite of what the newly release system was doing.
>
>
> I tried and I tried, to the point of yelling, to convince my
> colleague that the > documentation was wrong, not the system,
> but he continued to insist that since my document said A,
> it must be write. "It is in the manual," he kept repeating.


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