Re: Placement of cautions in procedures

Subject: Re: Placement of cautions in procedures
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 11:40:09 -0700


In this situation, I would make the caution part of the step, i.e.,
when you click on the link to the step, the caution should be at
the top of the page/frame/whatever that contains the step, prior
to the text of the step itself.

As for book recommendations, regulatory inspectors and
product liability lawsuit juries aren't going to care a whit; the
onus is on you to make whatever single source arrangement
you use comply with the requirement that the readers see
the cautions/warnings before they see the instruction.

Gene Kim-Eng


From: "Jones, Donna" <DJones -at- zebra -dot- com>

Another thing to consider is the final output of the document. For those of
us going from FrameMaker to HTML or PDF, there's a risk when you put a
caution above a step. If a user clicks on a hyperlink to get to a step, the
hyperlink could take him/her directly to the step text, so the user could
potentially miss the caution entirely. You have to get the hyperlink to jump
above the step so the caution always shows (a problem if you're linking to
the step number itself).

The book Single Sourcing - Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament
recommends placing notes and cautions after a step for just this reason.
Think of it in terms of an outline. If you're looking at an outline, do you
expect to see information relating to an item before the item itself? Or
does it all follow the number?



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References:
RE: Placement of cautions in procedures: From: Jones, Donna

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