Re: What good is it if you can't find it?

[Jason Deal <jason -dot- deal -at- mitratech -dot- com>]

That's not really the point.  Nobody ever would; it's obviously a 
ridiculous stance.  The proof is in the pudding; I've worked with my share 
that put on the brave face, and constantly tout content as being 
inextricably linked with design... and then utterly fail to understand the 
content, be content with what developers spoon-feed them, and end up 
creating a document that looks great and is utterly useless.
Nobody actually says they do this; they just go ahead and do it anyway.
A symptom of this, in my opinion, is the comment that Susan made: "But if 
all you want is content, you can ask an engineer for it."  I know for a 
fact that this is not the approach that Sue takes, that she does put effort 
into understanding the content that she is trying to document.  But there 
are plenty of people who take it for gospel that developers are telling us 
everything that we and the user need to know, and that everything they say 
is correct.  I have seen a lot of this, and I'm still really young.  If you 
do not understand the content that you are documenting, you are, by 
default, making yourself a glorified typist.  This is how design triumphs 
at the expense of content in the real world; it is not a conscious choice 
to spend all of your time choosing fonts.  It is simply that writers 
frequently do not consider the content important enough for them to take 
the time to understand.